
Class. 
Book. 



PRESENTED MY 



METAPHYSICS 



American Federation 0/ Labor, 
423-426 6 St, N.W., 

Washington, D: 0< 



METAPHYSICS 



OR THE 



PHILOSOPHY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 



PHENOMENAL AND REAL 



BY 
HENRY LONGUEVILLE MANSEL, B.D. 

WAYNFLETE PROFESSOR OF MORAL AND METAPHYSICAL PHILOSOPHY 

FELLOW OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, OXFORD 

HONORARY LL.D. OF THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH 



SECOND EDITION 



EDINBURGH 
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK 

186G 

[The Right of Translation is Reserved. ] 



w 






Gift 
Am. Fed . of j %bor 

Aup.7,L94rL 



PRINTED BY R. CLARK, EDINBURGH. 



PREFACE 



The present volume differs only in a few verbal correc- 
tions from the article " Metaphysics," as originally pub- 
lished in the last edition of the JEncyclopcedia Britannica. 
In estimating its character, with reference both to what it 
omits and to what it attempts to perform, it will be neces- 
sary to bear in mind that it is but a reprint of an article 
written under specified conditions, as a portion of a 
larger work, and not as an independent treatise. The 
plan of the article, embracing Metaphysics in the most 
comprehensive sense, together with the limited space 
allotted to its execution, rendered it necessary to attempt 
a general outline of a wide and in some degree ambiguous 
subject, which, in some respects, might perhaps have 
been more satisfactorily discussed by means of separate 
treatises on its subordinate parts. Some matters have 
thus been entirely omitted, and others very cursorily 
touched upon, which, under other circumstances, might 
have had a claim to insertion or fuller treatment. Thus, 
with the exception of some very slight notices of the 
modern German philosophy, no attempt has been made 



vi PREFACE. 

to furnish any historical account of the progress and 
various phases of metaphysical speculation ; a task 
which, as far as the Encyclopaedia was concerned, had 
in a great measure been already performed in Stewart's 
Preliminary Dissertation ; and which, besides, could not 
have been added to the present treatise without exceed- 
ing the reasonable limits of an article. And in what 
has actually been attempted, many important questions, 
especially in the latter part of the work, have been 
indicated rather than discussed : some hints have been 
given to stimulate and direct further inquiry ; but little 
has been done to satisfy it. Some of these deficiencies 
it would probably be out of my power to remedy; 
others, which I would gladly have attempted to supply, 
had I had leisure and opportunity for a complete re- 
vision, must at any rate be left as they are for the 
present. Nevertheless, though fully conscious of the 
imperfections of the work, I venture to hope that it 
may be of some service in giving English readers a 
clearer apprehension of a subject which, in this country, 
has been much neglected and misunderstood, and which, 
into whatever errors and extravagances it may at times 
have fallen, yet has its foundation in some of the 
deepest needs of human nature, and its superstructure 
in some of the noblest monuments of human thought. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

Introduction ..... 1 

I. Psychology, or the Philosophy of the Pheno- 
mena of Consciousness . . .33 
Of Preservative- or Intuitive Consciousness . 52 
Of the Form of Consciousness in general . 58 
Of the Forms of Intuitive Consciousness — 

Space and Time . . • .59 

Of the Matter of Intuitive Consciousness . 66 

Of Sensation and Perception . . .67 

Of the Five Senses . . . .70 

Oj Smell ..... 71 

Of Taste ..... 74 

Of Hearing . . . .76 

Of Sight ..... 78 

Of Touch and Feeling . . .81 

General Kemarks on the Five Senses . . 84 

Of the Locomotive Faculty . . . 95 

Of the Muscular Sense . . .101 

Of the Primary and Secondary Qualities of 

Body . . . . .105 

Of the Acquired Perceptions . . .116 

Of Attention . ... . .130 

Of Imagination, Memory, and Hope . 137 

Of Internal Intuition in general . 143 

Of the Classification of Internal Intuitions 146 

Of the Passions or Emotions . . 151 



Vlll 



CONTENTS. 



Of the Moral Faculty . 

Of Volition .... 

Of the Consciousness of Personality 

Of Kepresentative or Reflective Consciousness 

Of the Form and Matter of Thought 

Of the Several Operations of Thought . 

Of Conception 

Of Judgment . 

Of Reasoning .... 

Of the Associations of Ideas 

Of Necessary Truths . 

II. Ontology, or the Philosophy of the Realities 
op Consciousness 

Of Dogmatic or Demonstrative Metaphysics 

Of the Subdivisions of Dogmatic Metaphysics 

Of the Critical Philosophy of Kant 

Of the Systems of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel 

Of the System of Herbart 

Of the Philosophy of the Absolute in general 

Of the Conditions necessary to the existence of 

Ontology .... 
Of Theories of the Real not founded on Conscious 

ness .... 

Of the Real as given in Consciousness . 
Of the Real in Cosmology 
Of the Real in Psychology 
Of the Real in Theology 
Of the Real in Morality 
Of the Real in the Philosophy of Taste 
Conclusion .... 



Index 



399 



METAPHYSICS 



INTRODUCTION. 

AMOXG the various changes which the language of 
philosophy has undergone in the gradual progress 
of human knowledge, there is none more remarkable than 
the different significations which, in ancient and modern 
times, have been assigned to the term Metaphysics — a 
term at first sight almost equally indefinite in its etymo- 
logical signification and in its actual use. As regards 
the origin of the name, the most recent discussions 
appear on the whole to confirm the commonly-received 
opinion, according to which the term Metaphysics, 
though originally employed to designate a treatise of 
Aristotle, was probably unknown to that philosopher 
himself. It is true that the oldest and best of the 
extant commentators on Aristotle refers the inscrip- 
tion of the treatise to the Stagirite ;* but in the extant 
writings of Aristotle himself, though the work and its 
subject are frequently referred to under the titles of 
* Alexander in Arist. Metaph. B. (p. 1-7. ed. Bonitz). 



2 METAPHYSICS. 

First Philosophy, or Theology, or Wisdom* no authority 
is found for the later and more popular appellation. 
On the whole, the weight of evidence appears to be in 
favour of the supposition which attributes the inscrip- 
tion r« jMT& ra <pv<fixd to Andronicus Pdiodius, the first 
editor of Aristotle's collected works. The title, as given 
to the writings on the first philosophy, probably indicates 
only their place in the collection, as coming after the 
physical treatises of the author.t In this respect, the 
term Metaphysics has been aptly compared to that of 
Postils ; both names signifying nothing more than the 
fact of something else having preceded.* 

The title, thus indefinite in its etymological signifi- 
cation, does not at first sight appear to admit of more 
precision with reference to its actual application. Mr. 
Stewart, towards the end of his dissertation on the pro- 
gress of metaphysical and ethical philosophy,§ notices 
"the extraordinary change which has gradually and 
insensibly taken place, since the publication of Locke's 

* Asclepius, apud Brandis, Scholia, p. 519, b. 19. Bonitz in Arist. 
Metaph. p. 5. 

f " Titulum vulgatum ra. [xera ra <pv<w<d non ab ipso esse Aristotele 
bis libris inscriptum, adeo est verisimile ut pro certo haberi possit. . . 
Ad ordinem librorum hanc inscriptionem referri, ut libri de prima pbilo- 
sopbia excipere significentur libros physicos, communis fere est ac veris- 
sima interpretum Grsecorum sententia " (Bonitz ad Arist. Metaph. pp. 
3,5). M. Eavaisson, on the other hand, is of opinion that the name should 
be referred to Aristotle himself, or to one of his immediate disciples. 

X Cardwell's preface, to Taverner's Postils. 

§ See Encyclopaedia Britannica, 8th edition, vol. i. p. 227. 



INTRODUCTION. 3 

Essay, in the meaning of the word Metaphysics — a word 
formerly appropriated to the ontology and pneumato- 
of the schools, but now understood as equally 
applicable to all those inquiries which have for their 
object to trace the various branches of human know- 
ledge to their first principles in the constitution of our 
nature." "This change," he continues, "can be ac- 
counted for only by a change in the philosophical 
pursuits of Locke's successors — a change from the idle 
abstractions and subtleties of the dark ages, to studies 
subservient to the culture of the understanding ; to 
the successful exercise of its faculties and powers ; and 
to a knowledge of the great ends and purposes of our 
being. It may be regarded, therefore, as a palpable and 
incontrovertible proof of a corresponding progress of 
reason in this part of the world." 

This change in the pursuits, and consequently in the 
language, of philosophy had been noticed shortly before 
by a philosopher of another country in a very different 
spirit. Hegel, in 1816, introduced his lectures on the 
history of philosophy in the following words : — " In the 
other countries of Europe, in which the sciences and the 
cultivation of the understanding have been prosecuted 
with zeal and credit, every remembrance and trace of 
philosophy, the name only excepted, lias perished and 
disappeared. Among the Germans alone it has main- 
tained itself as a national possession. We have received 



4 METAPHYSICS. 

from nature the higher mission to be the preservers of 
this sacred fire, as the Eumolpidse of Athens were 
intrusted with the preservation of the Eleusinian mys- 
teries."* Between these opposite conceptions of Meta- 
physics or Philosophy (for in the language of Hegel 
the two terms may be regarded as synonymous), it is 
not easy for an expositor to select his point of view. A 
definition of Metaphysics which would include both 
would be defective philosophically from its vagueness ; 
one which would exclude either would be defective 
historically from its incompleteness. To omit the view 
indicated by Hegel would be to neglect the w T hole of the 
ancient and a great part of the modern history of the 
science. To omit the view indicated by Stewart would 
be to overlook almost entirely the important share which 
the writers of our own country have contributed towards 

* Hegel's TVerke, vol. xiii. p. 4. English philosophy, name and 
thing, is especially honoured with the contempt of this critic. "The 
natural sciences," he says, "are in England denominated Philosophy, 
An English Philosophical Journal treats of chemistry, agriculture, and 
manure, of housekeeping and professional knowledge, and communicates 
discoveries in these departments. The English call physical instruments, 
such as the barometer and thermometer, philosophical instruments. 
Theories, especially in morals and moral sciences, which are derived 
from the feelings of the human heart or from experience, are called 
Philosophy, as well as those which contain principles of political economy. 
Thus the name at least of Philosophy is honoured in England " (Ibid. 
p. 72 ; see also vol. vi. p. 13). In the same spirit are dictated his cri- 
ticisms on Bacon, Locke, and Newton ; the latter of whom, he says, has 
exhibited in his Optics a perfect specimen of the manner in which expe- 
riment and reasoning should not be conducted. 



INTRODUCTION. 5 

the solution of the great problem of philosophy. Yet the 
reader who has perused a few pages of Aristotle's Meta- 
physics or the later works of a cognate character, on the 
one hand, and of Locke's Essay or Stewart's Elements, 
on the other, will probably be at a loss to conjecture 
what possible common notion can be found to unite to- 
gether works so utterly distinct in their aim and method. 
A few preliminary observations on this point may, it is 
hoped, in some degree assist in throwing light on this 
obscure and almost imperceptible link of connection. 

Speculative Philosophy is divided by Aristotle into 
three branches — Physics, Mathematics, and Theology. 
The first investigates the special attributes of this or 
that body as such : the second considers the properties 
of bodily figures abstracted from their material accom- 
paniments : the third contemplates pure existence, 
apart from the sensible accidents of matter or figure.* 
This division, however, is one which could not have 
been made until after philosophy had attained to some 
considerable development. In the earlier stages of its 
history, philosophy in general would naturally be iden- 
tified with one or other of the above branches only, 
according as its first cultivators sought to explain the 

* Metaph. v. 1. See also De Anima, i 1. The distinction may be 
ustrated by an example. Suppose the object of contemplation to be a 
wooden square ; the physical philosopher considers it qud wooden ; the 
mathematician, qud square ; the theologian or metaphysician, qud some- 
thins which exi 



6 METAPHYSICS. 

principles and causes of things by means of this or that 
fundamental assumption. Hence it is, that while the 
history of Philosophy in its widest sense opens with 
inquiries identical in their aim with those afterwards 
pursued by the metaphysician, the history of Metaphy- 
sics proper can hardly be said to have commenced until 
the progress of thought, and the failure of previous 
speculations, led men to attempt the solution of the 
general problem of philosophy in a particular manner. 

Philosophy in general may be defined, as nearly as 
a conception so vague admits of a definition, as an in- 
quiry into the principles and causes of things.* Meta- 
physics has been defined by Aristotle (and the definition 
may be for the present provisionally accepted) as the 
science which contemplates being as being, and the 
attributes which belong to it as such.f The latter 
definition, while verbally resembling the former, ex- 
hibits, in fact, an important modification of it ; for it 
implies that the progress of philosophy had necessitated 
the division of things in general into beings, or things 
as they are, and phenomena, or things as they appear. 
The material principles assumed by the Ionians, and 
the mathematical relations of the Pythagoreans, were 

* Arist. Metaph. i. 1. Trju 6i>op.a£op,eP7)v <jo<filav irepl ra irp&Ta ultlo. 
/ecu ras dpxas viro\a/j.(3dpovai irdvres. See also Hobbes, Computatio site 
Logica. chap. 1, sect. 2. 

*t* Metaph. iii. 1. "Yio~tlv exicr?;/^ rts f] Oecope? to du i} '6v /ecu to. toxjt^ 
vir&pxovTa /ca#' avro. 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

theories of the universe, falling under the general con- 
ception of Philosophy ; but the origin of Metaphysics 
must rather be dated from the period when the Eleatics 
denied the reality of the sensible world, and confined 
the region of truth to the supersensible unity which can 
be obtained only by contemplation.* 

Philosophy becomes synonymous with Metaphysics 
in the view of those philosophers who regard thought 
alone as the channel by which men can attain to reality 
and truth — a point of view which predominates in the 
speculations and language of ancient Greece and of 
modern Germany. Our own countrymen have for the 
most part erred in the other extreme, and limited the 
province of philosophy too exclusively to the investiga- 
tion of the phenomena of sense. And the result has 
been that, while in Britain the name of Metaphysics has 
been rescued from contempt only by an abuse of lan- 
guage which identifies it with a branch of inductive 
science, in Germany it is not unusual to represent the 
country of Bacon, Newton, and Locke, as one which has 
produced no philosophy. 

The first step towards a definite conception of Meta- 
physics was attained by regarding it as the science of 
real existence. But this conception, like the wider one 

* Arist. Metaph. v. i. El p.kv ovv yu.77 earl ril eripo. ovaia irapa ras 
(pvaei <rvve<TTT)KvLas, 77 (puaiKrj &v etrj irpwrr) eTriaTT]p.7j ' el (art ris oicna 
dKivrjTos, clOtt) irporepa %al <pi.\oso<pia Trpdrrj. 



8 METAPHYSICS. 

of Philosophy in general, becomes in its subsequent 
process developed from different and even contradictory 
points of view, till the resulting systems appear to have 
nothing in common but the name. The notion of being, 
as distinguished from phenomenon, corresponds in its 
original signification with that which the mind con- 
ceives as permanent and unchangeable, in opposition to 
that which is regarded as transitory and fluctuating. 
Such- an object of inquiry may be approached from two 
opposite sides. It is the real in itself, and it is contem- 
plated by the mind as such. The problem has thus a 
twofold aspect, as related to the conditions of being 
and to the conditions of thought ; and its solution may 
be attempted from the one or the other starting-point. 
We may commence with abstract principles of being in 
general, and endeavour to deduce a priori the essential 
characteristics of existence^er se ; or we may commence 
with an examination of the actual constitution of the 
human mind, and endeavour to ascertain empirically how 
the conception of reality is formed, and what is its con- 
sequent value. And either of these methods of inquiry 
may be so conducted as in the end to lose sight of the 
original relation which binds them together ; and each 
may thus present an aspect of irreconcilable antago- 
nism, in place of the mutual pursuit of a common object- 
The a priori reasoner may pervert his conception of 
absolute being into a form which finds no counterpart 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

in the human consciousness, and, confident in the infal- 
libility of his own process, may condemn as worthless 
the mirror which refuses to reflect back the distorted 
image. And the investigator of the facts of conscious- 
ness, when his imperfect analysis has failed to discover 
the hidden element of reality, may proclaim reality itself 
to be a dream and a delusion, and the mind and all that 
it contains a mere aggregate of phenomena. Deceived by 
the apparent parallelism of the distant rays, the oppos- 
ing theorists forget that those rays must converge some- 
where in a common centre : they forget that philosophy 
itself is but the articulate development of consciousness ; 
that from consciousness all inquiries set out, and to con- 
sciousness they must all return. 

And such, history tells us, has been the actual fate 
of Metaphysics. The clue to its distant mazes, lost 
almost at the outset of the journey, became more and 
more irrecoverable as the paths diverged more and more 
from their common centre ; till its latest expositors on 
both sides were unconscious of its existence, if Aris- 
totle for a moment grasped the important truth, that the 
laws of things and the laws of thought were alike ob- 
jects of metaphysical inquiry,* the conviction produced 
hardly any result in the details of his treatment : his 

* Metaph. iii. 3. "Otl fj.h odv rod <pi\oa6<pov kcli tov irepl Tao-rjs tt}$ 
ovaias deupovvros ■?} Tri<pi<K€v, Kal Tepl tQiv avWoyiariKuv apxwv (<ttIi> iiri- 
(jK€\paa6ai, 5r]\oi>. 



10 METAPHYSICS. 

psychology allied itself chiefly to physics : his meta- 
physics, after its introductory chapter, deserted the track 
of psychology. If Locke laid the foundation of a better 
method of metaphysical inquiry, when he declared, that 
"before we set ourselves on inquiries of this nature, it 
was necessary to examine our own abilities, and see 
what objects our understandings were or were not 
fitted to deal with," * he prematurely excluded the very 
question which his method was required to solve, by 
asserting that we have no ideas of body or spirit as 
substances, but merely suppose an unknown substra- 
tum to our external or internal ideas, t The barrier 
thus interposed between the sister streams of thought 
was widened as each flowed on : the ontological philo- 
sophers of modern Germany gloried in being not merely 
independent of, but even contradictory to, the testimony 
of consciousness, while the psychological teachers of 
France and Britain confined themselves more and more 
within the charmed circle of phenomena, till D'Alembert 
declared that the office of metaphysics was to prove 
that all our ideas come from sensation ; t and Stewart 
denounced the inquiries of ontology as "the most idle 
and absurd speculation that ever employed the human 

* Essay, Epistle to the Header. f Essay, b. ii. ch. 23. 

J "La metaphysique a pour but d'examiner la generation de nos 
idees, et de prouver qu'elles viennent toutes de nos sensations" (Elem. 
de Pliilos. p. 143 ; Melanges, vol. iv., quoted in Sir W. Hamilton's 
edition of Stewart's Works, vol. i. p. 404). 



INTRODUCTION. 11 

faculties."* But the principle on which this conclusion 
logically rests is, as regards the Scottish philosophy, an 
excrescence rather than an integral portion of the system. 
We may refuse to admit the unproved dogma which 
denies to the human mind any conception of substance, 
and yet avail ourselves of the psychological researches 
of Eeid and Stewart, as a valuable, if an incomplete 
contribution to the philosophy of consciousness, and, 
through that, to the solution of those fundamental pro- 
blems of metaphysics to which consciousness gives rise. 
As the metaphysical writings of Aristotle and his 
followers are likely to be but little known to the majo- 
rity of modern readers, it may be useful to add a brief 
account of the ancient method of treating the subject, 
which will serve at the same time to exhibit more 
clearly the chasm which separates the earlier conception 
of the science from that of the modern disciple of Locke 
or Stewart. "There is a certain science," says Aristotle, 
" which contemplates Being in so far as it is Being, and 
the attributes that belong to it essentially as such. 
This science is not the same with any of those which 
are called particular sciences ; for none of these inquiries 
generally concerning Being as Being, but each selects 
some separate portion of Being, and contemplates the 
properties of that alone ; as, for example, mathematics. 
But since we are seeking for the principles and highest 
* Philosophical Essays, Preliminary Dissertation, ch, i. 



12 METAPHYSICS. 

causes of things, it is clear that these must have some 
nature to which they properly belong. We must there- 
fore take as the object of our inquiry the first causes of 
Being as Being."* 

A similar conception of the great problem of phi- 
losophy had been previously exhibited by Plato in his 
sketch of the office of Dialectic — a science which, though 
differing in name and method, is in its purpose and aim 
identical with the First Philosophy or Theology of Aris- 
totle. In the sciences of geometry and arithmetic, he 
tells us, certain principles of numbers and figures are 
assumed by hypothesis as self-evident, but not investi- 
gated by any process of reasoning ; and from these 
assumptions the proposed questions are demonstrated. 
But in dialectic the same hypotheses are employed, not 
as first principles, but as stepping-stones to some higher 
truth and absolutely first principle, which is grasped by 
the intellect without hypothesis, as that on which all 
other reasoning ultimately depends. t 

The problem of Metaphysics, as conceived by both 
these philosophers, may be perhaps more clearly stated 
in modern language as follows : — " To determine the 
relation that exists between the subjective necessities 
of thought and the objective necessities of things." In 

* Metaph. iii. 1. The same view is also exhibited more fully in 
v. 1, in a passage too long for quotation, 
f Republic, vi. p. 510. 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

mathematical demonstration, for example, we start from 
certain axiomatic principles, of which, as mathemati- 
cians, we can give no other account than that they are 
self-evident ; that is to say, that we are compelled by the 
constitution of our minds to admit them. But this opens 
a further question. What is the relation of self-evidence 
to reality? Is the necessity, of which I am conscious, 
of thinking in a certain manner, any sure guarantee of a 
corresponding relation in the objects about which I 
think ? In other words, are the laws of thought also 
laws of things ; or, at least, do they furnish evidence by 
which the laws of things can be ascertained ? Is thought 
identical with being, so that every mode of the one is at 
the same time a mode of the other? Is thought an 
exact copy of being, so that every mode of the one is an 
adequate representative of some corresponding mode of 
the other? Or, finally, is thought altogether distinct 
from being, so that we cannot issue from the circle of 
our ideas, to seize the realities which those ideas are 
supposed to represent ? Does anything exist beyond 
the phenomena of our own consciousness ? and, if it does 
exist, what is the path by which it is to be reached ? 

The ancient and mediaeval metaphysicians adopted 
almost unanimously the d priori method of reasoning 
downwards from the assumption of abstract principles 
of Being, — as the moderns have laid the foundation of 
the inverse method of reasoning upwards from the 



14 METAPHYSICS. 

plienomena of Thought. A short analysis of the principal 
subjects treated of in the Metaphysics of Aristotle will 
serve to exhibit the details of the former method, as far 
as our present limits will permit. In the order of the 
books we shall follow the common arrangement, which, 
though far from unexceptionable, is perhaps not more 
liable to objection than others which have been proposed 
in its place. 

The first book comprises a psychological account of 
the nature of science and its origin in the human mind, 
followed by a history of the researches of previous 
philosophers into the principles v and causes of things. 
To this is subjoined a kind of appendix (the book 
known as A minor), containing an argument in favour 
of the existence of a first principle of things, and 
consequently of the possibility of attaining to a know- 
ledge of it ; with a caution concerning the method 
to be pursued, and the necessity of accommodating the 
mode of reasoning to the nature of the object. 

The second book commences with a list of questions, 
which are to be answered in the course of the treatise, 
and which may be regarded as furnishing a sort of table 
of contents to the rest of the work * They may be 
briefly summed up as follows : — 1. Do the principles of 

* The correspondence, however, is by no means exact. Michelet ob- 
serves : — "En general, il faut remarquer ici que l'enumeration etle de- 
veloppement des problemes conte'mis dans ce livre ne repondent pas 



INTRODUCTION. 15 

being and those of demonstration belong to the same or 
to different sciences, to one science or to many ? 2. Are 
there other substances besides objects of sense ; and, if 
so, of how many kinds ? 3. To what science does it be- 
long to take cognisance of identity and difference, simi- 
larity and dissimilarity, priority and posteriority, and 
such like ? 4. Are the principles of things to be sought 
in their genera, or in the material elements of indivi- 
duals, or does there exist a cause or causes other than 
matter, and separable from it ? 5. Are there the same 
principles of things perishable and imperishable, and are 
all principles themselves imperishable? 6. Are being 
and unity the essence of all things, or must other ele- 
ments be added? 7. Are the principles of things uni- 
versal or individual, potential or actual, active or 
passive ? 8. Are numbers, lines, figures, and points 
substances or not ; and, if substances, do they exist 
separate from the objects of sense ? A further develop- 
ment of the difficulties involved in these questions occu- 
pies the remainder of this book. 

The third book is occupied with the sketch of a 

exactement a leurs solutions domn'es clans lea autres livres. Car bean- 
coup de problemes sont transposes ; quelqnes-uns n'y sont qu'effieuras; 
plusieurs y sont reunis, a cause de L'affinite' qu'il yaentre euac ; d'autres 
enfin lont traites en differents endroita M (Exam. Critique, p, 181). 
The division of the questions themselves admits of considerable variety. 
Michelet and Ravaisson enumerate as many as seventeen. Mr. Maurice 
{Moral wnd Metaphysical Philosophy, p. 1< S; 5) reduces them t<> six. 



16 METAPHYSICS. 

Science of Being as such, which has for its object both 
the principles of things and the laws of reasoning. In 
it the philosopher maintains the truth of the logical 
principles of contradiction and excluded middle, against 
the objections of Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, and others, 
and establishes the distinction between being and ap- 
pearance, and consequently between truth and error. 

The fourth book is an explanation of the various 
significations of several philosophical terms. The terms 
defined are, — principle, cause, element, nature, necessity, 
unity, being, substance, identity, distinctness and di- 
versity, similarity and dissimilarity, opposition and 
contrariety, priority and posteriority, power, quantity, 
quality, relation, perfection, limitation, in respect of and 
in itself (xa0' 6' and x.aff abro), disposition, habit, passion, 
privation, possession, derivation, part, whole, imperfec- 
tion, genus, falsehood, accident. 

The fifth book continues the sketch of a Science of 
Being which was commenced in the third. This science 
(called by Aristotle Theology, and afterwards known 
as Metaphysics) is distinguished from Physics and 
Mathematics. Being per se, the proper object of 
Metaphysics, is distinguished from other senses of 
the term, — such as accidental existence, which is not an 
object of science, and truth in judgments, which belongs 
to thought and not to things. 

The sixth book is a continuation of the same subject. 



INTRODUCTION. 17 

Being, in the highest sense of the term, is identified with 
Substance, to the exclusion of the other categories. But 
substance, again, is a term used in various senses ; some- 
times for the essence of a thing, sometimes for its uni- 
versal attributes, sometimes for the genus, sometimes for 
the subject of attributes, or the individual. A discussion 
of these different senses, and of the philosophical theories 
connected with them, occupies the remainder of the 
book. 

The seventh book continues the discussion of Sub- 
stance. The essence of sensible things may be con- 
sidered in two points of view, — as regards the matter or 
potential essence, and as regards the form or actual 
essence, corresponding to the genus and difference in a 
definition. The unity of such objects must be sought 
for in the principle which unites these two. Intelligible 
objects, which have no matter, are one by virtue of their 
form. 

In the eighth book the distinction between matter 
and form, or potential and actual existence, is further 
discussed. The distinction between the potential and 
the actual is defended against objections. The actual is 
prior to the potential in the order of nature and of 
reason, and, in one sense, in that of time also. It is 
prior in the order of reason ; for power has no meaning 
but in relation to performance. It is prior, too, in the 
order of time in the species, though not in the individual : 

c 



18 METAPHYSICS. 

for the powers of anything are produced by its efficient 
cause, and the cause, as such, is in action. Hence it 
follows, that the distinction between the potential and 
the actual exists only in relation to things perishable ; 
for that which is eternal cannot have become what it is, 
and therefore can never be potentially that which it is 
not actually. In other words, there is a cause of change 
which itself acts unchangeably, and which is prior to all 
change. The chief good and highest principle is thus 
ever active, and there is no eternal principle of evil ; for 
actual evil is a corruption posterior to the possibility of 
evil. The book concludes with a discussion of the 
nature of truth and falsehood ; the latter of which 
can have no place in relation to first principles, which 
must either be absolutely known or absolutely un- 
known. 

The ninth book is a digression, treating of the opposi- 
tion between the one and the many. The various senses 
of unity enumerated in the fourth book are now reduced 
to four, — the continuous, the whole, the individual, and 
the universal. Unity is identified with existence, and 
declared in opposition to the Pythagoreans and Plato- 
nists, to be not a substance, but an universal notion 
predicable of every kind of subject in the several 
categories. The opposition between unity and plurality 
is shown to be not one of contrariety, but of rela- 
tion. The book concludes with a further digression 



INTRODUCTION. 19 

on some points connected with the opposition of con- 
traries. 

In the tenth book, as well as in the ninth, the con- 
nection of the argument is somewhat interrupted. This 
book, in fact, contains little more than a recapitulation 
of matters treated of in some of the earlier books. The 
concluding chapters of this book are an abridgment of 
a portion of the Physics of Aristotle, and appear alto- 
gether out of place in their present position. 

The eleventh book is the most important of all ; and 
though apparently incomplete in itself and in its con- 
nection with its predecessors, may be regarded as con- 
taining an outline of Aristotle's views on the profoundest 
problems of metaphysical philosophy. In this book, 
after some preliminary remarks on the nature of sub- 
stance, change, and causation, the philosopher resumes 
his inquiry into the nature of the first cause — the un- 
changing principle of all change and motion. Sensible 
substances, the objects of physical science, are subject to 
change ; and all change implies a progress of the same 
subject from one of two opposite states to the other ; 
from not be : ig to being, or the reverse. Hence change 
implies thr e elements : the form, the privation, and the 
matter potentially susceptible of both. But change it- 
fc If must take place in consequence of some cause ; we 
ir, ist therefore add a fourth principle to the three ele- 
ments. We are thus led to the notion of a substance 



20 METAPHYSICS. 

which is the efficient cause of change, and this substance 
must be eternal ; for even change and time are conceived 
as imperishable, and these depend upon a substance. 
The cause of change must therefore be a being eternallv 
acting, and which, consequently, cannot be conceived as 
having a power to act prior to the exercise of that power. 
In other words, the first cause (as was said before in the 
eighth book) can never be potentially that which it is 
not actually. The first cause is thus active without 
being passive ; it moves all things without being 
itself moved. The action of an unmoved cause of 
motion may be regarded as analogous to that of an 
object of desire on the appetite, or of an object 
of contemplation on the intellect ; for these excite 
to action without being themselves acted upon. Thus 
the principle of change may be conceived both as 
first cause and as final cause or chief good, which all 
things desire, and by the desire of which they are 
moved.* This first cause is God, who, as the highest 
object of intellectual contemplation, must himself be 
conceived as Intellect, as ever active, as living (for the 
activity of intellect is life), as immaterial, having neither 
finite nor infinite extension, and consequently no parts, 
as impassive and unchangeable. To this sublime theo- 
logy are appended some curious astronomical specula- 
tions, apparently intended to reconcile the unity of the 

* Kivel d£ ws iptifjievov. Metaph. xi. 7. 



INTRODUCTION. 21 

Divine Mover with the seeming variety in the celestial 
motions. To these speculations, which are chiefly de- 
rived from previously existing astronomical theories, 
the philosopher himself does not appear to attach much 
importance. Resuming the theological argument, he 
maintains that the Deity, as an ever-active and 
unchanging Intellect, must have an unchanging object 
of contemplation, and as there is no other such object, 
he must contemplate himself. The book concludes 
with a criticism of previous philosophers, whose opin- 
ions, as he considers, are irreconcilable with the exist- 
ence of one supreme Ruler of the Universe. 

The two last books must be considered either as an 
introduction to the eleventh, which most modern com- 
mentators regard as the conclusion of the whole treatise, 
or as a controversial appendix, intended to fortify the 
positions which that book had established. The contro- 
versy is chiefly directed against the Pythagorean and 
Platonic philosophies, which sought the eternal principle 
of the universe, the one in the theory of numbers and 
geometrical magnitudes, the other in that of ideas. The 
details of this controversy, part of which is little more 
than a repetition of the arguments of the first book, are 
chiefly valuable in a historical point of view, as throw- 
ing light on the Pythagorean and Platonic doctrines ; 
but they contribute little to the elucidation of Aristotle's 
own conception of Metaphysics. 



22 METAPHYSICS. 

The Aristotelian First Philosophy, as exhibited in the 
above sketch, has certainly little enough in common with 
an inductive science of the human mind ; and its specu- 
lations will probably appear to a modern reader suffi- 
ciently vague and barren. But they have a value, 
historical and philosophical, far beyond their apparent 
significance to a superficial inspector. They have a his- 
torical value, as representing the course of metaphysical 
inquiry which was pursued, with scarcely an exception, 
for nearly twenty centuries, and which even now exer- 
cises a legitimate influence over the minds of men hardly 
less extensive than its former absolute dominion. And 
they have a philosophical value, of which their historical 
position is the index. However wide may be the gulf 
that separates the ancient and modern systems of philo- 
sophy, they have this at least in common, that both are 
the produce of human minds, thinking under the same 
laws, and impelled to speculation by the same irre- 
sistible motive of yearnings unsatisfied, and doubts un- 
solved. Each seeks to comply with the requirements of 
the same nature : each sets out from the ground of that 
common consciousness which, in intellect no less than 
in affection, makes the whole world kin. " Homo sum ; 
humani nihil a me alienum puto," is a maxim no less 
applicable to the most abstruse speculations of philo- 
sophy than to the affairs of our every-day life. Philo- 
sophy, in all its aspects, is a contribution to the history 



INTRODUCTION. 23 

of humanity ; an attempt, successful or unsuccessful, to 
carry out the great end and purpose of man's existence. 
The study of the master-minds of the human race is 
almost equally instructive in what they achieved and in 
what they failed to achieve ; and speculations which 
are far from solving the riddle of existence have their 
use in teaching us why it is insoluble. 

Thus it appears that the term Metaphysics has 
been at different times used in two principal senses : 
1. As synonymous with Ontology, to denote that branch 
of philosophy which investigates the nature and pro- 
perties of Being or Reality, as distinguished from 
Phenomenon or Appearance. 2. As synonymous with 
Psychology, to denote that branch of philosophy which 
investigates the faculties, operations, and laws of the 
human mind. These two sciences may be regarded, as 
has been already observed, as investigations of the same 
problem from opposite points of view ; but this feature 
of relation has been practically overlooked by the majo- 
rity of writers on either side ; and the link which is to 
connect the actual contents of each remains still to be 
pointed out. One, indeed, but hardly definite enough, 
has been indicated by Dugald Stewart. " On comparing 
together," says that distinguished philosopher, "the 
multifarious studies now classed together under the title 
of Metaphysics, it will be found difficult to trace any 
common circumstance but this — that they all require 



U METAPHYSICS. 

the same sort of mental exertion for their prosecution ; 
the exercise, I mean, of that power (called by Locke 
reflection) by which the mind turns its attention inwards 
upon its own operations, and the subject of its own 
consciousness." This passage seems to point out a 
closer connection between the different senses of the 
term Metaphysics than that which it actually expresses. 
For it refers us not merely to a common method of 
inquiry, in the process of reflection, but also to a 
common object, in the facts of our own consciousness. 
But to exhibit this connection *clearly, the latter term 
must be extended to a somewhat wider signification 
than that sanctioned by Stewart's use of it. 

On this term, Sir William Hamilton remarks : 
"Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, and philosophers in gene- 
ral, have regarded consciousness, not as a particular 
faculty, but as the universal condition of intelligence. 
Eeid, on the contrary, following probably Hutcheson, 
and followed by Stewart, Eoyer-Collard, and others, has 
classed consciousness as a co-ordinate faculty with the 
other intellectual powers, distinguished from them, not 
as the species from the individual, but as the individual 
from the individual. And as the particular faculties 
have each their peculiar object, so the peculiar object of 
consciousness is the operations of the other faculties them- 
selves, to the exclusion of the objects about which those 
operations are conversant. 



INTRODUCTION. 25 

" This analysis we regard as false. For it is impos- 
sible, in the first place, to discriminate consciousness 
from all the other cognitive faculties, or to discriminate 
any one of these from consciousness ; and, in the second, 
to conceive a faculty cognisant of the various mental 
operations, without being also cognisant of their several 
objects. 

" We know ; and we know that we know ; — these pro- 
positions, logically distinct, are really identical ; each 
implies the other. We know (i.e. feel, perceive, ima- 
gine, remember, etc.) only as we know that we thus 
know ; and we know that we know, only as we know in 
some particular manner (i.e. feel, perceive, etc.) So true 
is the scholastic brocard : — ' Non sentimus nisi sentiamus 
nos sentire ; non sentimus nos sentire nisi sentiamus! 
The attempt to analyse the cognition I know, and the 
cognition / know that I know, into the separate energies 
of distinct faculties, is therefore vain. 

" But the vice of Eeid's analysis is further mani- 
fested in his arbitrary limitation of the sphere of con- 
sciousness ; proposing to it the various intellectual 
operations, but excluding their objects. . . : The 
assertion that we can be conscious of an act of know- 
ledge, without being conscious of its object, is virtually 
suicidaL A mental operation is only what it is, by 
relation to its object ; the object at once determining its 
existence, and specifying the character of its existence. 



26 METAPHYSICS. 

But if a relation cannot be comprehended in one of its 
terms, so we cannot be conscious of an operation with- 
out being conscious of the object to which it exists only 
as correlative. For example, We are conscious of a 
perception, says Eeid, but are not conscious of its ob- 
ject. Yet how can we be conscious of a perception, that 
is, how can we know that a perception exists, — that it is 
a perception, and not another mental state, and that it 
is the perception of the rose, and of nothing but a rose, — 
unless this consciousness involve a knowledge (or con- 
sciousness) of the object, which at once determines the 
existence of the act, specifies its kind, and distinguishes 
its individuality % Annihilate the object, you annihilate 
the operation ; annihilate the consciousness of the object, 
you annihilate the consciousness of the operation."* 

Extending the term facts of consciousness, in accord- 
ance with the principle of the above criticism, to denote 
all those phenomena of mind whose existence in a 
definite form, as operations of a particular kind, and the 
knowledge of that existence, are identical ; we may find 
in these facts an adequate object for the investigations 
of Metaphysics in the most general sense of the term ; 
and in this sense, accordingly, we would define the 
science of which we are treating, as " Metaphysics, or 
the Philosophy of the Pacts of Consciousness, considered 
subjectively, in relation to the mind knowing, and 

* Discussions, p. 47. 



INTRODUCTION. 27 

objectively, in relation to the things known." Meta- 
physics will thus naturally divide itself into two 
branches, — Psychology, or the science of the facts of 
consciousness as such ; and Ontology, or the science of 
the same facts considered in their relation to realities 
existing without the mind. 

Neither of these two branches of Metaphysics, thus 
treated, can be considered as exhausting the senses in 
which their respective names have been used. Psycho- 
logy, both in its earliest and in some of its latest develop- 
ments, has been treated in connection w T ith physiology, 
and thus extended to phenomena beyond the range of the 
facts of consciousness properly so called. Aristotle, the 
first systematic expositor of the science, enumerates, in 
conjunction with the threefold division of the facts of 
consciousness into those of sensation, thought, and voli- 
tion,* a fourth function of nutriment and growth, the 
existence of which cannot be identified with the con- 
sciousness of it. I perceive, and I know that 1 perceive ; 
I think, and / know that I think; I will, and / know 
that I will : — these propositions are severally equivalent 
to each other ; but not so / digest, and I know that I di- 
gest. Modern writers on psychology have treated it with 

* I have ventured to use the term volition, as nearly equivalent to 
the motive principle of Aristotle ; though the connection of the latter 
with the will is but imperfectly exhibited in his treatise, owing to the 
want of a strict distinction between the phenomena of human conscious- 
ness and those of animal life. 



28 METAPHYSICS. 

a similar extension to physiological phenomena. On- 
tology, in like manner, has, in modern times especially, 
sought a foundation for its speculations beyond the do- 
main of consciousness, and even contradictory to it ; 
nearly the whole of the systems of German metaphy- 
sicians since Kant being a series of attempts, more or less 
plausible, to account for the origin of the facts of con- 
sciousness themselves, by postdating a principle of which 
we are not and cannot be conscious. Neither of these 
extensions of the field of inquiry will be adopted in the 
present treatise. We shall, indeed, have to borrow largely 
from physiology in illustration of the bodily conditions 
on which mental consciousness depends ; but the two 
sciences will be considered as distinct branches of 
inquiry, though the conclusions of the one may throw 
some collateral light on the researches of the other* 
On the other hand, the transcendental method, which 
seeks to found a Philosophy of Being in a point above 
consciousness, will be rejected, from a conviction of its 
utter inability to furnish any reliable or even intelli- 
gible results. All such theories are open to two fun- 
damental objections : — they cannot be communicated, and 
they cannot be verified. They cannot be communicated ; 

* The limits of psychology and physiology are denned in an excellent 
essay by M. Jouffroy, Nouveaux Melanges Philosophiques, p. 222. The 
phenomena of consciousness, which are known only as affections of 
myself, belong to the former science ; those of animal life, which can 
be discerned by observation of foreign bodies, belong to the latter. 



INTRODUCTION. 29 

for the communication must be made by words ; and the 
meaning of those words must be understood; and the. 
understanding is a form of consciousness, and subject to 
the laws of consciousness. They cannot be verified ; 
for, to verify, we must compare the author's experience 
with our own ; and such comparison is again an act of 
consciousness, and subject to its laws. This considera- 
tion must serve as our apology for the neglect of 
systems which are indeed entitled by their celebrity to 
a prominent place in the history of metaphysical philo- 
sophy, but which cannot, except upon the ground of 
their truth, claim admission into a treatise on the 
science itself. 

There is a wide application of the term conscious- 
ness, in which it is coextensive with the whole cycle of 
human knowledge ; for we can know nothing without 
being conscious that we know it ; and we can investi- 
gate no objects but those whose existence, real or appa- 
rent, must be made known to us by consciousness. In 
this sense, what is out of consciousness is out of the 
field of human knowledge altogether. But this con- 
sideration does not affect the definition which assigns 
the facts of consciousness as the proper object of meta- 
physical science. For in other sciences those facts are 
considered, necessarily indeed, but secondarily only, as 
the means by which the direct objects of such sciences 
are made known to us. The maimer in which con- 



30 METAPHYSICS. 

sciousness operates as the instrument of the physical 
sciences is not taken into account by those sciences, nor 
is the nature and veracity of its testimony called in 
question. Physical science does not trouble itself with 
the inquiry, whether the objects which it investigates 
are real or apparent ; qualities of matter or modes of the 
spectator's own mind ; whether they are gained directly 
or indirectly ; by innate or acquired powers ; by one 
faculty of the mind alone or by the union of many. Its 
researches are not in any way affected by the adoption 
of this or that theory of consciousness itself; though 
consciousness is the means by which its objects are 
conveyed to it. In metaphysical science, on the other 
hand, consciousness itself is the direct object of our 
inquiries ; and that in two points of view : 1. In its 
phenomenal character, in relation to the conscious sub- 
ject ; in which we consider the several affections of the 
human mind in which consciousness consists, and the 
faculties, operations, and laws, upon which those affec- 
tions depend. 2. In its real character, in relation to 
the objects of which we are conscious ; in which w r e 
consider the veracity of its testimony in reference to 
things without the mind, and the indications which it is 
supposed to furnish of the actual constitution of those 
things. Of these two inquiries, the first is preliminary 
and auxiliary to the second ; both because it is neces- 
sary to know what the facts of consciousness are in 



INTRODUCTION. 31 

themselves, before inquiring into their ulterior rela- 
tions, and because the light which the former inquiry is 
calculated to throw on the laws and limits of human 
thought, will be of importance in determining how far 
it is possible to obtain a satisfactory answer to the 
latter. We commence, then, with the first portion of 
our inquiry. 



PSYCHOLOGY, OE THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE 
PHENOMENA OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 

CONSCIOUSNESS, in its relation to the subject or 
person conscious, is of two kinds ; or rather, is 
composed of two elements — the presentative or intuitive, 
and the representative or reflective. The phenomena of 
the former class may be distinguished by the general 
name of Intuitions ; those of the latter by that of Thoughts. 
Presentative or intuitive consciousness is the con- 
sciousness of an individual object, be it thing, act, or 
state of mind, immediately present before me, here or 
now ; that is to say, with a definite position in space, or 
in time, or in both. Representative or reflective con- 
sciousness is the consciousness, primarily and directly, 
of a general notion or concept, indifferently related to any 
number of possible individuals ; secondarily and indi- 
rectly, of one or more actual individuals conceived as 
exhibiting at the moment, in an unity of representation, 
the several attributes which the general notion involves. 
For example, I see a triangle drawn on paper. I need 
not know that the figure now lying before me is called 
a triangle. I may be unable to give any definition of it. 

D 



34 METAPHYSICS. 

It is enough that I see a figure, which I did not con- 
struct for myself according to any pre-existing notion, 
but found there already constructed. This is presenta- 
tion consciousness, or intuition. The triangle is before 
me, as an object seen in itself, not necessarily repre- 
sentative of anything else. But, having seen the tri- 
angle, I gather a general notion of its figure, indiffer- 
ently applicable to it or to any other specimen ; and 
I imagine a particular figure, at another time and in 
another place, as embodying that notion. This is repre- 
sentative consciousness, and in a two-fold manner. First, 
the general notion is representative of any number of 
possible triangles, even when none is actually present to 
the consciousness. Secondly, the same notion is now 
actually exhibited in an image ; which image represents 
the original figure from which the notion was derived. 
The same distinction is applicable to mental as well as 
to bodily phenomena. I feel an emotion of anger ; I am 
conscious of its presence now, as a definite state of mind 
distinguishable from others. This consciousness is pre- 
sentative. "When the angry fit is over, I meditate upon 
my past state, and recall in imagination the emotion 
which I have experienced. This consciousness is repre- 
sentative. Preservative consciousness contains two con- 
stituent elements — the conscious subject, and the object 
of which that subject is conscious. Eepresentative 
consciousness contains three elements — the subject, the 



PSYCHOLOGY. 35 

object (i.e. the image), and the concept or general notion 
mediating between them. A fourth element is implied 
as a condition, though not actually present in conscious- 
ness — viz. the original intuition from which the notion 
was derived, and which the object or image represents. 

The ultimate object of all consciousness is thus an 
individual ; for all intuitions are directly cognisant of 
individuals ; and all concepts, to be realised in conscious- 
ness, require to be individualised in an image. Without 
the application of this test, we should not be able to 
distinguish between the conceivable and the inconceiv- 
able ; between signs indicative of notions and signs 
indicative of no notions at all. I may define a triangle 
as a rectilinear figure of three sides ; and I may also 
define a Mangle as a rectilinear figure of two sides ; and 
nothing but the attempt to construct the corresponding 
images can show me that the one term denotes a conceiv- 
able object, and that the other is an inconceivable piece of 
nonsense. The individual is thus the ultimate object of 
all actual consciousness ; in intuition directly, and in 
thought indirectly. To complete our explanation, we 
must therefore determine what is meant by an individual. 

By the term an individAtal is meant, in psychology, 
no more than an object occupying a definite position in 
space or time. It is indifferent, in this point of view, 
whether the several individuals thus distinguished can 
or cannot really exist apart from each other ; or whether 



3G METAPHYSICS. 

the portion of space or time which each occupies is dis- 
tinguished from other portions naturally or arbitrarily. 
The leaf which I see before me is an individual ; so is 
the bough ; so is the tree ; so is the forest. Each has 
its own position in space, which nothing else can 
occupy along with it. A chain of six feet long is an 
individual ; whether it exists separately, or only as part 
of a longer chain. Every link, and every fragment of a 
link, of the chain is again an individual, in so far as, 
with or without physical separation, it may be made a 
distinct object of sight or thought. What space is to 
material individuals, time is to individual phenomena of 
mind. I may feel anger or fear many times in succes- 
sion ; but each has its own peculiar portion of time ; 
and the passion which I felt yesterday, however similar 
in other respects, is numerically distinct, as an individual 
state of mind, from that which I felt the day before 
yesterday, or that which I am feeling at this moment. 
We need not at present inquire whether each of these 
distinct individuals has in reality a separate existence 
apart from our point of view or not. They may be 
independent units : they may be fractions of larger 
units : they may be multiples of smaller units : they 
may be constituent parts of one only real unit, the 
universe. They may be modes of my own mind ; or 
they may be attributes of something distinct from 
myself. These questions belong to Ontology, not to 



PSYCHOLOGY. 37 

Psychology. It is sufficient for our present purpose to 
state, that whatever occupies a distinct portion of space, 
however arbitrarily distinguished, is an individual object 
of external intuition ; and whatever occupies a distinct 
moment of time, without extension in space, is an indi- 
vidual object of internal intuition. 

On the other hand, general notions or concepts, as 
such, have no definite position in time or space ; though, 
when realised in an individual act of thought, they must 
have a relation to the former, and may have to the latter. 
The definition of a triangle, as a rectilinear figure of 
three sides, is indifferently applicable to a triangle in 
England or to one in America ; to one drawn on paper 
or to one engraved on stone ; to one conceived yesterday 
or to-day. But when actually employed in conception 
it becomes my present thought about a triangle ; and this 
has its definite position in time, and is related to an 
image conceived as occupying a definite position in 
space. The verbal description of a particular coin is 
indifferently representative of all coins struck from the 
same die ; but two shillings of the same coinage, though 
they may be undistinguishable in other respects, are yet 
separate individuals, as occupying distinct portions of 
space. The general notion is thus potentially representa- 
tive of many individuals ; that is to say, it may, in 
different ads of thought, be employed in relation to any 
member of a certain class ; but when actually so em- 



38 METAPHYSICS. 

ployed, in any one single act of thought, it becomes amal- 
gamated with the individual in which its attributes are 
united, and is only conceived along with the special 
characteristics of the individual. Thus the notion of a 
triangle, as such, does not imply that it is equilateral, 
isosceles, or scalene ; but I can never actually conceive 
a trianole which is none of these, or all of them at once. 
I must conceive it as some one of them only. But, in 
successive acts of thought, the same general notion may be 
represented in the imagination, at one time with three 
equal sides, at another with two, at another with all un- 
equal. The notion is thus not the adequate and actual 
representative of any single object, but an inadequate 
and potential representative of many. 

We have thus one characteristic of the concept or 
general representative notion ; namely, that it cannot in 
itself he depicted to sense or imagination; though, in 
every complete act of representation, it forms one ele- 
ment of an image which is so depicted. The mere 
notion of a triangle, apart from the consideration of the 
equality or inequality of its sides, is not an object of 
imagination ; nor the notion of an equilateral triangle, 
without a given length of the sides ; nor, again, the 
notion of an equilateral triangle whose sides are each 
two feet long, without the additional limitation of its 
occupying a particular position in space ; — under which 
limitation, it is no longer general, but individual, and 



PSYCHOLOGY. 39 

can be constructed in the imagination as an object of 
intuition. A second characteristic of all general notions 
is, that they require to he fixed in a representative sign. 
The general notion, as such, is not a sensible image, but 
an intelligible relation ; and such a relation, as far as 
our experience can testify, cannot be apprehended with- 
out the aid of language — i.e. of some system of signs, 
verbal or other. The case of the deaf and dumb is no 
exception to this rule ; for language, in the above sense, 
is not synonymous with articulation. The mental 
development of the deaf and dumb is effected by the 
substitution of a system of signs addressed to the eye or 
the hand, in the place of one addressed to the ear ; and 
this system performs precisely the same office in relation 
to them that speech performs in relation to others : it 
constitutes, in fact, their language. Language in this 
sense appears, as far as experience can inform us, to be 
necessary, not merely to the communication, but even 
to the formation of thought. The notion, as such, must 
be emancipated from all special relation to space or 
time. The definition of a triangle must not imply 
where it exists ; nor the definition of anger, when it 
takes place ; and this emancipation is never completely 
effected, except by means of symbols, verbal or other, by 
which the notion is fixed as a relation in the under- 
standing* We have thus, in the complete exercise of 

* The distinction between intuition and thought thus corresponds 



40 METAPHYSICS. 

thought, three successive representations. The sign is 
representative of the notion ; the notion is representative 
of the image ; and the image is representative of the 
object from which the notion was formed. 

Presentative and representative consciousness, thus 
distinguished, must be considered, in their actual ■ exer- 
cise, as indicating a logical rather than a real division ; 
as pointing out the elements of a perfect act of con- 
sciousness, which are separable in thought ; but not 
two distinct acts existing separately in practice. In 
every complete act of consciousness offered to us for 
analysis, the presentative and representative elements 
are combined ; and without such a combination, it 
would appear as if consciousness, properly so called, 
could have no existence. To have a complete con- 
sciousness, for example, of any particular object of 
sense, say of an oak-tree, two conditions are necessary ; 
first, that certain impressions should be made upon the 
organ of sensation ; and secondly, that these impressions 
should be discerned as constituting an object ; i.e. that 
they should be separated from all other objects, and con- 
sidered by themselves as constituting a whole, which 
can be compared with and distinguished from other 
wholes. To the mere sight the oak is presented along 

to that noted by Leibnitz between intuitive and symbolical knowledge. 
See bis Meditationes de Cognitione Veritate et Ideis, where, however, the 
distinction is hardly marked with sufficient precision. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 41 

with the surrounding scenery ; but to recognise it as an 
oak, the trunk must be considered separately from the 
ground from which it springs, and the branches and the 
leaves must be discerned as parts of the tree, and separ- 
ated from the surrounding objects. The reception of 
the whole scene presented to the eye is an act of mere 
intuition ; but the knowledge of each impression as 
being what it is, and the combination of a portion of 
such impressions into a separate whole, is an act of 
reflection or thought.* Neither of these two elements 
alone can constitute a complete act of consciousness. 
Let us suppose, for instance, the existence of a being 
furnished with human organs of sensation, but with no 
power of remembering or reflecting upon the objects 
presented to them, and no continuance of any impression 
beyond the moment of its actual presence. It is pro- 
bable that, in such a case, though diverse objects might 
be successively presented to the senses, yet there won hi 

* Cheseltlen says of his patient, who had been couched for cataract, — 
" Be knew not the shape of anything, nor any one tiling from another, 
however different in shape or magnitude." The language is ambiguous : 
it may mean that he was unable at first to separate the different objects 
in the field of vision from each other, or it may mean only thai he could 
not distinguish them by their right names. Condillac goes beyond the 
warrant of the original in rendering, " II apercevoit tous lesobjets pele- 
mele et dans la plus grande confusiou " {Trait6 des Sensations, p. iii. 
eh. ">). But Cheselden's experiment, besides the want of precision in 

the report, is not decisive for other reasons : 1. Because a cataract do< S 
not produce total blindness; 2. Because the other senses had been 
educated before the operation was performed. 



42 METAPHYSICS. 

be no consciousness of their diversity ; for such con- 
sciousness requires the juxtaposition of the objects in 
the mind, and this can only be effected by memory. 
Animals, trees, and stones, might be successively placed 
before his eyes. Pleasure and pain and fear and anger 
might possibly take place within him ; but as each 
departed, he would have no knowledge that it had ever 
existed, and consequently no power of comparison with 
anything else. He would thus have no distinct con- 
sciousness of each object as referred to a separate notion : 
he could not say, this which I see is a tree or a stone ; 
this which I feel is fear or anger. His consciousness, if 
consciousness it could be called, would probably be no 
more than an indefinite sense of uneasiness, a feeling of 
momentary irritation in the organ affected, but without 
discerning in what manner it is affected, and without 
distinguishing the permanent self from its momentary 
affection.* This is the lowest degree of intelligence, 
the germ of consciousness, but not itself entitled to the 
name ; as being deficient in the essential conditions of 
limitation and difference, not having realised the dis- 
tinction between subject and object, or between one 

* A state of representation very nearly resembling this is supposed 
by Leibnitz to exist in bis monads. This state he calls perception 
without apperception or consciousness, and considers it as the character- 
istic state of existence of simple monads, as distinguished from souls, 
which are capable of memory and distinct consciousness. (See Monado- 
logie, sect. 14, 19.) 



PSYCHOLOGY. 43 

object and another.* But let us go one step further, and 
suppose the same being to be capable, not merely of 
receiving, but of retaining and associating together, 
various impressions, though still destitute of the power 
of reflecting upon them. Let us suppose, that is to say, 
that the impression, once made, may continue for a time 
in conjunction with others, and spontaneously recur 
upon certain occasions ; though the subject of the im- 
pression is unable to set it apart as an object of thought, 
or to recall it by an effort of his own will. We have 
now a second stage of intelligence — a partial conscious- 
ness, embracing a variety of objects and relations of 
similarity or dissimilarity between them : we have the 
recurrence, moreover, of certain feelings upon the 
repetition of the circumstances under which they were 
originally excited. In a word, we have an association of 
intuitions. But the conditions of consciousness are not 
yet complete ; for memory, at this stage of its develop- 
ment (the imM of Aristotle), though it implies a repe- 
tition of phenomena, does not as yet imply a knowledge 

* If the testimony of Psychology is to be trusted, the sublime intel- 
lectual condition in which subject and object are identified, a condition 
longed for by mystics of all ages, and proclaimed as the basis of philo- 
sophy by modern German metaphysicians, is a degradation of man to the 
level, possibly, of a zoophyte. Yet there have not bees wanting philo- 
sophers to proclaim this lowest possible manifestation of animal existence 
as the exaltation of man to the level of God — as the state of Deity con- 
templating himself. 



44 METAPHYSICS. 

that it is a repetition. An animal at this stage of intel- 
ligence might, for instance, be beaten for a fault, and the 
recurrence of the fault might naturally suggest an im- 
agination of the pain ; but this imagination need not be 
consciously regarded as a remembrance of pain felt at a 
former time. The reproduction would be spontaneous, 
not voluntary, and probably not accompanied by airy 
conscious reference to past time. Let us now assume 
another step in the scale of intelligence, and suppose 
our imaginary being to possess, not merely a power of 
receiving and retaining impressions, but also of recalling 
them by a voluntary effort (the avd/ivriag of Aristotle). 
This implies that the leading features of the impression 
remain fixed in the mind, independently of the presence 
of the object at a particular place or time. This is the 
distinctive feature of the concept or general notion, 
in which, whether by a conscious process or not, the 
mind abstracts the leading attributes of an object from 
the condition of limitation in space and time, and is 
able, under the guidance of those attributes, to recognise 
the object when presented to it at other times, and, 
under the same guidance, to reproduce at will the image 
of the object when absent. Here we have the co-opera- 
tion of thought proper, as evidenced by a conscious 
recognition of objects as such, and of their several rela- 
tions to the one conscious self, whose permanence and 
personal identity is necessarily discerned in every act 



PSYCHOLOGY. 45 

of consciousness properly so called, as the continuous 
subject of successive modifications. This is the only 
form of intelligence which can properly be expressed by 
the judgment, / know, or / know that I know ; and at 
this stage we have reached the point of true conscious- 
ness, in which the existence of a phenomenon is identi- 
cal with the knowledge of its existence, and the mind, 
in the act of being affected in any manner, is at the 
same time cognisant of being so affected. 

The above stages must not be regarded as correspond- 
ing to a chronological development of the actual pheno- 
mena of the human mind. Logically, perhaps, the 
several elements by whose co-operation consciousness is 
produced, may be thus analysed ; but in the actual pro- 
gress of the mind by education, the several elements are 
so mingled together that it is impossible to point out 
any particular time at which one exists separately from 
the rest, or to mark the period of each new accession. 
Classifications, which we are unable to form for our- 
selves, are, from the earliest dawn of intelligence, given 
to us, already formed by others. The child, in learning 
to give names to the objects placed before him, and to 
repeat those names at each recurrence of the objects, 
learns, unconsciously to himself, to perform the acts of 
reminiscence and generalisation, along with that of sen- 
sation, and advances by imperceptible degrees to a 
definite consciousness. To point out each succi 



46 METAPHYSICS. 

stage of the process by which sensibility gives birth to 
intuition, and intuition to thought, is as impossible as to 
determine the several moments at which the same child 
receives each successive increase of his stature, or each 
successive development of his bodily powers. The 
mind, like the body, acquires its functions by insensible 
degrees, " unseen, yet crescive in its faculty," and we 
find ourselves in the possession and exercise of nature's 
gifts, without being able to say how we acquired them. 

Consciousness proper, as above described, must 
possess in some degree the attributes of clearness and 
distinctness. Using the same term in a wider and less 
accurate sense, we may distinguish between an obscure 
or an indistinct, and a clear or a distinct consciousness. 
An act of consciousness, whether presentative or repre- 
sentative, is clear when its object as a whole can be dis- 
tinguished from any other ; when this cannot be clone, 
it is obscure. An act of consciousness is distinct when 
the several parts constituting its object can be dis- 
tinguished from each other ; when this is not the case, 
it is indistinct* To form a clear or distinct conscious- 
ness, an act of reflection must accompany the intuition. 
An obscure or indistinct consciousness may in some 
degree be obtained by intuition alone. The latter con- 

* The difference between clear and obscure, distinct and indistinct 
or confused cognitions is due to Leibnitz. (See his Meditatione-s de 
Cognitione Veritate et Ideis. ) 



PSYCHOLOGY. 47 

tains all the materials of the former, though not dis- 
posed in the same relations to each other. In an 
obscure or indistinct intuition we may be dimly aware 
of the existence of differences of some kind, but be 
unable to say what they are. In order to obtain this 
latter knowledge, the first step must be to separate our 
confused intuition into distinct portions ; and in per- 
forming this task we are, as a matter of fact, invariably 
assisted by the distinctions of language ; that is to say, 
by a classification already performed by the reflection 
of others. By learning to recognise under their names 
the different portions of a confused intuition, we take 
the first step towards a clear and distinct consciousness 
of things and thoughts. It is obvious, however, from 
what has been said before, that the terms clear and 
distinct are rather relative than absolute, and that a 
perfectly obscure consciousness is no consciousness at 
all in the proper sense of the term. 

ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 

What has been said concerning the relation of 
thought to language may perhaps suggest two other 
questions which have often been discussed without any 
satisfactory answer. It may be asked, in the first place, 
how we are to account for the origin of language itself,, 
and how the distinctions which language now helps us 



48 METAPHYSICS. 

to make could themselves have been made available in 
the original imposition of names ; and, in the second 
place, it may be asked how the different phenomena of 
consciousness can be distinguished from each other by 
the lower animals, who have no nomenclature to assist 
them. Both these questions admit of many ingenious 
conjectures, but of no scientific answer. And the reason 
is obvious ; for both relate to states of consciousness 
which we never have experienced and never can, and 
which are so utterly unlike our own, that we have no 
reliable data for examining them. To conceive an in- 
ventor of language, we must conceive a man existing in 
the full ^maturity of his faculties ; those faculties not 
having been developed by any of the means that are in- 
dispensable now, and consequently not having assumed 
the same form in their development. Such a being is 
to us as inconceivable as one of a wholly different 
mental constitution. ' His thoughts are not our 
thoughts ; his conditions of speech are not ours. Our 
experience is so unlike what his must have been, that 
it will but mislead us if we reason from it ; and if we 
conjecture without the aid of experience, we deal in 
fiction, not in philosophy. Nor is the difficulty lessened 
if we suppose language to have been of divine origin ; 
for the real problem is, not to determine how the system 
of signs came into being, but how man learnt to asso- 
ciate it with his own distinctions of thought ; or how, 



PSYCHOLOGY. 49 

independently of it, lie came to have such distinctions 
at all. The origin of language must ever remain a 
mystery ; but it is a mystery which has its parallel in 
every other phenomenon of the sensible or intelligible 
world ; for of all, while the existence is undeniable, the 
generation is inconceivable. * That a man living in soli- 
tude from his earliest infancy, supposing him to be pre- 
served to animal maturity, or any number of such men 
brought together into a separate society, apart from 
other men, could never acquire the mental power to 
invent a language, seems as nearly certain as such a 
point can be. Beyond this we have no means of specu- 
lating on the origin of language at all. Nor are we 
much better off in relation to the second question, as to 
the mental condition of the lower animals. To analyse 
a dog's consciousness, it is necessary that we should 
have a dog's consciousness ourselves ; and besides this, 
that we should retain a distinct recollection of it after 
we have acquired a human one. The dog can distin- 
guish his master from a stranger ; that is clear. He can 
be educated by associations of pain or pleasure ; that is 
clear also. But when conscious of his master's pre- 
sence, does he recognise him as a being distinct from all 
other objects — as an object that can be observed or con- 
templated alone ? AVhen he is uneasy at losing him, 
has he a distinct consciousness of what it is that he 
wants ? When he is educated, does he consciously iv- 

E 



50 METAPHYSICS. 

present to himself the association between tit-bits and 
sitting upright ? And if he does so, does he do it by 
the aid of any system of representative signs, which, 
though unintelligible to us, performs an office analogous 
to that of human language?* In a word, does his state 
of intelligence more nearly resemble the second or the 
third stage of our supposed development of conscious- 
ness ? Instinct resembles reason in many of its results ; 
does it therefore resemble it in its manner of obtaining 
them ? We may speak positively on these points with 
all the hardihood of ignorance ; but in doing so, we are 
speculating on the nature of an intelligence different 
from our own, and whose conditions cannot even be 

* Mr. Morell states positively the view which we have only ven- 
tured to hint interrogatively. " While the brute perceives objects, and 
acts in reference to them only instinctively, either for the satisfaction of 
its appetites, or for self-preservation ; a conscious separation is instantly 
effected by the human faculty between the subject and the object. In 
this separation lies the first distinctive act of human intelligence, an act 
to which there soon succeeds an apprehension of qualities in the external 
object, totally different from any intelligence that can take place in the 
case of the lower animals. The animal does not think within itself, I 
am a dog or a horse, and that is a hare or a corn-field ; it is simpry im- 
pelled by the force of instinct towards the object, without any apprehen- 
sion of its own personality, as distinct from the thing presented to it. 
On the other hand, the child or the savage, without the least culture 
whatever, consciously separates self from the objective world in the very 
first distinct act of perception ; and it is exactly here, in this very act, 
that the intellectual quality of perception is first manifested " (Elements 
of Psychology, p. 141). Compare, for a similar view, Hegel, Encykl. § 
24 ( WerTce, vi. p. 47). 



PSYCHOLOGY. 51 

conjectured, except by the arbitrary assumption of its 
partial similarity to our own. 

Human consciousness, then, in the only form in 
which it can be examined and described, is a compound 
of various elements, of whose separate action, if it ever 
existed, we retain no remembrance, and therefore no 
power of reproducing in thought. It is impossible to 
have a distinct conception of an act of pure sensation — 
i.e. of an affection of the organs of sense only, unaccom- 
panied by reflection upon it ; for such an affection, 
though possibly the earliest step in our mental develop- 
ment, could not at that time be recognised as such, nor 
leave traces that could be recognised afterwards. Our 
personal consciousness, like the air we breathe, comes to 
us as a compound ; and we can no more be conscious of 
the actual presence of its several elements than we can 
inhale an atmosphere of pure azote. Hence it follows, 
that in distinguishing and describing the several pheno- 
mena of consciousness, w T e must describe them accord- 
ing to their predominant characteristics as compounds, 
not according to their separate natures as simples. The 
phenomena, for example, of sensation, are so called from 
their prominent feature ; the presence, that is to say, of 
an object affecting in a certain way the organs of sense ; 
though the consciousness of the manner of that affection 
in each case, and consequently its existence as a dis- 
tinct phenomenon, depend likewise upon the co-oper- 



52 METAPHYSICS. 

ation of other faculties, which play a necessary though 
a subordinate part. The neglect of this consideration 
constitutes the weak point in Condillac's celebrated 
hypothesis of the statue becoming conscious. He starts 
with the assumption that the possession of a single 
organ of sense is sufficient for the discernment of dis- 
tinct sensations as such, for remembrance and compari- 
son of various sensations, for the preference of one to 
another, for voluntary efforts to recal them, and for self- 
consciousness throughout. Whereas, in truth, though 
the existence of the sensation in a perfect state is iden- 
tical with the consciousness of that existence, yet we are 
by no means warranted in assuming that either can be 
brought into that state by the operation of an isolated 
organ of sense. With this preliminary caution as to the 
relation of the several faculties and acts of conscious- 
ness to each other — a caution which must be carefully 
borne in mind throughout — we shall now proceed to 
examine and describe the various phenomena of con- 
sciousness separately, so far, at least, as separation in 
this case is possible. 

OF PEESENTATIVE OR INTUITIVE CONSCIOUSNESS. 

The distinctive feature of presentative consciousness 
consists in the fact that it is caused by the actual pre- 
sence of an individual object, whether thing, act, or state 



PSYCHOLOGY. 53 

of mind, occupying a definite position in time, or in 
space, or in both. It is true that this object is not dis- 
cerned as such, and the consciousness of it, therefore, is 
not fully realised without the co-operation of the repre- 
sentative faculties ; and it is true also that representa- 
tive consciousness, when complete, is exhibited in an 
individual unity of representation ; but as the presence 
of the individual object is in the one case the principal, 
in the other only an accessory feature ; and as in the 
one it may be regarded as the cause, in the other as the 
effect of the accompanying consciousness, it furnishes a 
sufficient principle of distinction between the two. We 
shall therefore class under the general denomination of 
Intuitions, all those states of consciousness in which the 
actual presence of an object, within or without the mind, 
is the primary fact which leads to its recognition as such, 
by the subject; and from these will be distinguished, 
under the name of Thoughts, all those states of con- 
sciousness in which the presence of the object is the 
result of a representative act on the part of the subject. 
In the former case, the presence of the object is invo- 
luntary ; in the latter it is voluntary. In both, the pre- 
sentative and representative faculties act in combination, 
for this is the condition of all complete consciousness ; 
but in the former case the object is given to, in the latter 
it is given hy, the conscious act. For example, while I 
am in the company of a friend, I have by sight an intui- 



54 METAPHYSICS. 

tive consciousness of his presence. I do not cause his 
presence by any mental effort of my own ; it is given to 
me ; and so long as my eye is turned towards him, I 
cannot help seeing him. But if I am thinking of an 
absent person, and endeavour to recal to mind his fea- 
tures, I make a voluntary effort, and thereby bring into 
consciousness a mental image which becomes internally 
now present ; but the presentation is one of my own 
making, constructed by means of the reflective or repre- 
sentative faculty. In adopting the term presentation or 
intuition, to express the consciousness of any individual 
affection of the mind, a writer may be liable to the 
charge of innovation, in what was at least in the last 
generation the established language of English philoso- 
phy. But in this case necessity has no law. We need 
a term which shall indifferently express the presence of 
an individual sight or sound in the eye or ear, and of 
an individual emotion or volition in the mind ; and if 
none such exists in current use, there is no resource but 
to coin one. It may be added, that if such a term had 
been in use in the days of Locke, his writings need not 
have been liable to the perpetual misunderstanding 
which arises from his ambiguous use of the term reflec- 
tion. The same apology must serve for the occasional 
introduction of other philosophical terms, which, though 
gradually coming into use, are hardly as yet in general 
circulation. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 55 

Preservative consciousness, thus distinguished, ap- 
pears, like all consciousness, in the form of a relation 
between the subject or person conscious, and the object, 
or that of which he is conscious. These two terms are 
correlative to each other, and imply each other. The 
subject is a subject to the object, and the object is an 
object to the subject .* The subject can only be con- 
scious by knowing itself to be affected in a particular 
manner by an object ; the object can only be known as 
affecting the subject in a particular manner. Thus the 
two are given in relation as mutually determining and 
determined by each other. We are affected in various 
manners by various objects presented to us. But these 
objects again exist for us as objects, only in so far as 
they are discerned by our faculties of consciousness. 
The subject and the object are thus only cognisable as 
existing in and affected by their mutual relation. We 
cannot be conscious of a pure ego, or subject affected in 

* A word in passing on the often used and often misused terms sub- 
jective and objective. All consciousness has a subject and an object ; 
but sometimes the object determines the character of the subject, and 
sometimes the subject determines the character of the object. In the 
former case the product is objective, in the latter it is subjective. 
Thus, a nervous affection dependent on the constitution of my animated 
organism is subjective ; a quality perceived or conceived as existing in 
the constitution of the object is objective : a code of morality which 
allows each man to fix his own standard of right and wrong, is subjec- 
tive ; one which requires the opinions of men to conform to a rule inde- 
pendent of themselves, is objective. This explanation, however, applies 
onby to the modern signification of the terms. 



56 METAPHYSICS. 

no particular manner ; nor yet of a pure non ego, or 
object out of relation to our own cognitive powers. 
Hence arises a distinction between phenomena, or things 
in consciousness, and things in themselves, or things out 
of consciousness. We know the object only as it stands 
in relation to our faculties, and is modified by them. 
We are not sure that, if our faculties were altered, the 
same things would appear to us in the same form as 
they do now : we are not sure that they do appear in 
the same form to all existing intelligent beings ; for we 
know not how far the faculties of other beings resemble 
our own. But, on the other hand, we have no right to 
dogmatise on the negative side, and to assume, with 
equal absence of ground, that things are not in them- 
selves as they appear to us. This question, however, 
belongs to Ontology, and will be examined in its proper 
place. Psychology is concerned with the phenomena 
of consciousness as such. It has nothing to do with 
the ulterior realities, whose existence and nature con- 
sciousness perhaps indicates, but certainly does not 
ascertain. 

Nevertheless, though consciousness exists, and can 
be conceived to exist, only in the psychological relation 
of a subject to an object, it is possible in some degree 
to distinguish between the elements apparently due to 
each. Not that these can be directly discerned apart 
from each 6ther ; but that in their combination each 






PSYCHOLOGY. 57 

exhibits certain features which appear to indicate a 
subjective or an objective origin. If there are in every 
act of consciousness certain invariable elements, which 
no change of consciousness can ever obliterate or alter, 
which no effort of thought can get rid of or conceive as 
absent, and without which consciousness itself cannot 
be imagined as possible, — these may be conjectured to 
owe their existence to the constitution of the subject, 
which remains one and unchanged in successive acts ; 
while the changeable features which distinguish one 
mode of consciousness from another are probably due 
to the different constitutions of the several things of 
which the subject is successively conscious* The 

* An apparently opposite use of this criterion is made in some of 
the current theories of philosophy. Thus, in the distinction, which we 
shall shortly have to notice, between the primary and secondary quali- 
ties of hody, those attributes of which the cognition is common to the 
several senses are usually regarded as existing in the bodies themselves ; 
while those which are peculiar to this or that act of sensation are 
considered as affections of the sentient subject. But in truth the op- 
position is rather apparent than real. For the secondary qualities, as 
they are commonly distinguished, depend for their cognition, not on the 
constitution of the pure mind or subject proper of consciousness, but on 
that of the nervous organism as animated ; and this latter, though in 
particular acts of sensation it is regarded as pertaining to the subject, 
yet, in reference to consciousness in general, and to the personal self 
properly so called, must be regarded as belonging to the object, and, as 
such, is present or absent in different acts of consciousness. Indeed, the 
above distinction between form and matter, though not thoroughly 
carried out in reference to the sensibility till the time of Kant, bad, in 
relation to thought, been long previously an established canon in I 



58 METAPHYSICS. 

former may therefore be distinguished as constituting 
the form or subjective ingredient of consciousness ; the 
latter as constituting the matter or objective ingredient. 

OF THE FORM OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN GENERAL. 

The analogy which gives rise to the terms form and 
matter, as used to denote the subjective and objective 
elements of consciousness, is obvious. In a work of 
art, the form is that which is given by the artist ; the 
matter is that which is given to him. The sculptor, 
for instance, receives the unshaped block of marble, 
and imparts to it the form of the statue. The con- 
scious mind, in like manner, receives its materials from 
without, and imparts to them a form by its own act, 
according to its own laws. The form of consciousness 
in general consists in relation to a subject. Whatever 
variety of materials, whether for intuition or thought, 
may exist within reach of my mind, I can become 
conscious of them only by recognising them as mine. 
By this the several materials are in each case set apart 
or united, and known as an object, of which / am 
conscious ; and without such knowledge no act of con- 
sciousness is possible. Eelation to the conscious self is 
thus the permanent and universal feature which every 
state of consciousness, as such, must exhibit ; while in 
every other respect the several states may differ from 



PSYCHOLOGY. 59 

each other, being distinguished as sensations, volitions, 
thoughts, etc. ; or more particularly as states of sight or 
hearing, as virtuous or vicious acts, as conceptions or 
judgments ; or more minutely still, as the sight of a 
tree or the hearing of music, as an act of benevolence or 
ingratitude, as the conception of a triangle or the judg- 
ment that the angles of a triangle are equal to two 
right angles. But in all alike there is a necessary 
relation to one and the same conscious self : the sight 
is my sight, the act is my act, the thought is my 
thought. If we further examine the manner in which 
this universal relation manifests itself in the particular 
case of presentative consciousness, we shall find two 
special forms or conditions common to all possible 
states of external or internal intuition respectively — 
namely, Space and Time. 

OF THE FORMS OF INTUITIVE CONSCIOUSNESS — SPACE 
AND TIME. 

Space is the form or mental condition of our per- 
ception of external objects. The phenomena of the 
material world may vary in an infinite number of 
ways ; but, under every variety, they retain the con- 
dition of existing in space, either as being themselves 
sensibly extended, or as having a local position in 
the sensitive organism. Without this condition, their 



60 METAPHYSICS. 

existence at all as phenomena is inconceivable. We 
may suppose the phenomena changed as we will in 
other respects, but we cannot suppose them to exist 
out of space. We may suppose any given phenomenon 
to be non-existent, but the non-existence of space is 
beyond our power of supposition. Hence space is 
necessarily regarded as infinite (though not positively 
conceived as such), for to suppose it finite is to suppose 
a point at which it ceases to exist. It has thus the 
characteristics of universality and necessity, which 
appear to mark it out as an a priori law or condition of 
the conscious mind, not as the adventitious result of any 
special experience. And this conclusion is confirmed by 
other considerations. For the consciousness of space, 
though accompanying the perceptions of various senses, 
cannot be regarded as properly the object of any one of 
them. There is a visible extension given in the appre- 
hension, of space as occupied by light and colour ; there 
is a tangible extension given in the consciousness 
of certain portions of the organism as occupied by 
tactual impressions ; and there is probably a certain 
consciousness of locality in the exercise of the other 
senses. But pure space is not identical with any of 
these ; for the blind man may form as positive a notion 
of it as the seeing man ; and one debarred from the sen- 
sation accompanying the act of touch would not thereby 
lose all consciousness of space ; and the same argument 



PSYCHOLOGY. 61 

applies still more clearly to the other senses. Again, 
the exercise of the locomotive faculty implies a con- 
sciousness of space as containing our own body ; but 
the idea of space cannot be said to be derived from 
locomotion, since the mere volition to move implies a 
prior consciousness of this relation. Space is thus not 
by itself an object of sensible intuition, but forms one 
element of all such objects, being presented in the 
form of a relation between parts out of each other, and 
hence being distinctly conceivable only in conjunction 
with the things related. Pure space has thus one 
character in common with concepts or general notions — 
namely, that it cannot by itself be depicted to sense 
or imagination ; but in all other respects it is essen- 
tially different from them. A concept is logically as 
well as chronologically posterior to the individuals 
which it represents. It implies a prior perception of 
them, and it has no objective existence but in them. 
Space is logically, and in some degree chronologically, 
prior to the objects of sense. It is the condition of 
their existence as objects, and is itself necessarily 
conceived as existing independently of any given con- 
tents.* A concept is indifferently representative of 
many objects. Space is presented to consciousness as 

* Space, though not positively conceived as devoid of all contents, 
is yet necessarily conceived as separable from any given contents, and 
thus as independent of each in succession. 



62 METAPHYSICS. 

one only (for the division of spaces is purely arbitrary), 
and thus is not conceived as predicable of individual 
objects under it, but as containing them in it. Space is 
thus an element of the sensitive consciousness pre- 
sented in itself, not derived from or representative of 
anything else ; and, though always manifested on the 
occasion of some special experience, it cannot be re- 
garded as the product of experience, nor can its notion 
be constructed from empirical data. It cannot properly 
be described as an innate idea, for no idea is wholly 
innate ; but it is the innate element of the ideas of 
sense which experience calls into actual consciousness. 
To describe experience as the cause of the idea of space, 
would be as inaccurate as to speak of the soil in which 
it is planted as the cause of the oak ; though the 
planting is the condition which brings into manifesta- 
tion the latent powers of the acorn. To maintain that 
the mind contributes nothing to the formation of con- 
sciousness, because experience contributes something, is 
as unreasonable as to assert that the acorn may indif- 
ferently become an oak, or an ash, or an elm, according 
to the soil in which it is planted. Yet such reasoning- 
has often been used to prove that the mind is but the 
passive recipient of impressions from without. 

In the actual development of human consciousness, 
the condition of space accompanies every complete 
exercise of the bodily senses ; for in all there is a local 



PSYCHOLOGY. 63 

relation to a particular organ; and without this 
relation no kind of sensation can be fully realised as 
a mode of consciousness. And this is all that is 
necessary to observe, so long as we are describing con- 
sciousness as it is, not constructing it as it might be. 
"Whether any single organ of sense — smell, for instance, 
or hearing, supposing it to exist isolated from the rest — 
would be competent to furnish the empirical conditions 
under which the consciousness of space is realised, is a 
question which can only be approximately and conjec- 
turally answered by a special examination of each 
sense. But such an examination would throw but little 
light on human consciousness as it actually exists. 
Consciousness is the result of a human intellect acting 
in conjunction with a human organisation ; and if we 
withdraw or mutilate either element, we produce, not 
an actual man, but a hypothetical monster. A being- 
endowed, according to the hypothesis of Condillac, with 
a sense of smell only, and identifying himself with his 
successive sensations (it would be more correct to say 
having no notion of self at all), would not, properly 
speaking, be in any sense a conscioits being. He would 
be deficient in the essential conditions of consciousness, 
the distinction of subject from object, and of objects 
from each other. To be conscious of a particular 
sensation we must know it as such ; and to know it as 
such implies a concomitant knowledge of other sensa- 



64 METAPHYSICS. 

tions as different, and thus of the bodily organism as 
extended, or as occupying space. 

Much of what has been said of Space is applicable 
to Time also. This is the condition, not merely of 
external perception, but of the entire consciousness, 
external and internal alike. Consciousness in every 
form implies a permanent and a variable element — a 
continuous self subject to successive modifications. It is 
thus necessarily manifested as a change, and that change 
as taking place in time. Pure time, like pure space, is 
not in itself an object of consciousness, but an element 
which, to be realised in consciousness, must be com- 
bined with the results of experience. We can form 
no notion of time per se with no events taking place in 
it. Time is thus manifested in the form of a relation of 
successive modes of consciousness to the one conscious 
self. It might be conjectured with some plausibility 
that a being not subject to any change of consciousness, 
or, on the other hand, one not cognisant of his per- 
sonal identity in the midst of change, would have no 
idea of time. But then such a being would have no 
consciousness at all in the proper sense of the term. 
Time, like space, cannot be annihilated by any act of 
thought, and cannot be conceived as subject to any 
limitation, as having either beginning or end, or as 
absent from any mode of consciousness. Indeed, these 
conditions mutually imply each other ; for to conceive 



PSYCHOLOGY. 65 

a limit of time would be to conceive a consciousness in 
which time is present, preceded or followed by another 
from which time is absent. Time has thus, in common 
with space, the characteristics of universality and 
necessity, which appear to indicate a subjective condi- 
tion, or law of consciousness itself. Like space, too, it 
is manifested in conjunction with and on the occasion 
of experience, being presented simultaneously with 
the empirical element of change, the apprehension 
of which constitutes the first step of positive con- 
sciousness * . 

We are not at present concerned with the question 
whether space and time have any real existence apart 
from that of the mind which gives these forms to the 
objects of its consciousness. This question belongs to 
Ontology, not to Psychology. Space and time are known 
to us as formal conditions of consciousness ; whether 
they are anything more than such conditions, is a 
question which at present we have no means of an- 
swering. The laws of consciousness must be primarily 
manifested as binding upon the conscious mind. As 
such, they necessarily accompany every manifestation 
of consciousness ; and in their utmost objective reality 

* The apparent paradox, on the one hand, that consciousness must 
have had a beginning in time, and on the other, that consciousness is 
only possible under the form of a change of state, will be further ex- 
plained in the sequel. 

F 



66 METAPHYSICS. 

they could do no more. But we do not deny the real 
existence of space and time, though at the present stage 
of our inquiry we are not able to affirm it. We shall 
hereafter have occasion to consider whether this ques- 
tion can be answered at all. It is sufficient for the 
present to say that it cannot be answered by Psy- 
chology. 

OF THE MATTER OF INTUITIVE CONSCIOUSNESS. 

The Matter of intuitive consciousness cannot be 
specified with the same exactness as the Form ; for 
while in all cognate acts of consciousness the form is 
one and the same, and therefore admits of a distinct 
examination apart from the several modes of conscious- 
ness into which it enters, the matter is the variable 
element by which one act of consciousness differs from 
another, and which, therefore, can only be fully ana- 
lysed by a separate examination of each individual 
case. The various phenomena of the matter of con- 
sciousness, however, admit of being classified and 
partially described under certain general heads ; and 
such a classification has accordingly been attempted in 
the distinctions, which form the substance of most 
psychological treatises, between the various states, 
operations, and faculties of the human mind. 

The Matter of intuitive consciousness, in its widest 



PSYCHOLOGY. 67 

sense, denotes all that distinguishes one object from 
another, as given in and by this or that special expe- 
rience. Of experience there are two principal sources : 
1. Sensation, or external intuition, by which we become 
cognisant of the phenomena connected with our mate- 
rial organisation ; and 2. Internal intuition (called by 
Locke reflection)* by which we become cognisant of the 
several successive states of our own minds. To the 
former we owe the materials of our knowledge of what 
takes place without us ; from the latter, in like manner, 
is derived our knowledge of what takes place within us. 
The subdivisions of these two constitute the several 
states and operations of the human mind. 

OF SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 

Sensation, in its most general acceptation, is some- 
times used to signify the whole of that portion of con- 

* There is an ambiguity in Locke's use of the term reflection, which 
has given rise to considerable misunderstanding. Etymologically, the 
term should denote a turning back of the mind upon an object previously 
existing, so that the existence of a state of consciousness is distinct from 
the reflection on that state. In this sense, a sensation, like any other 
mode of consciousness, may be an object of reflection ; and those philo- 
sophers who understood Locke in this sense were only consistent in 
reducing his two sources of ideas to the single one of sensation alone. 
But, in the greater part of Locke's Essay, reflection is treated of in a 
different sense, namely, as the immediate consciousness of our internal 
states of mind — a consciousness identical with the existence of those 
states, and thus forming an original source of ideas. 



68 METAPHYSICS. 

sciousness which comes to us by means of the bodily 
organs of sense. Perception, too, has been used by 
various writers in a wider or a narrower sense — some- 
times as synonymous with consciousness in general, 
sometimes as limited to the apprehensions of sense 
alone.* Under the latter limitation it has been found 
convenient to make a further restriction, and to dis- 
tinguish between sensation proper and perception proper. 

Sensation proper is the consciousness of certain affec- 
tions of our body as an animated organism. 

Perception proper is the consciousness of the existence 
of our body as a material organism, and therefore as 
extended. 

The sensitive organism may be considered in two 
points of view : — 1. As belonging to the ego, or con- 
scious subject, which, in its actual concrete existence, is 
susceptible of consciousness only in and by its relation 
to a bodily organism. 2. As belonging to the non ego, 
or material object of consciousness, from which the 
mind, as an abstract immaterial being, is logically sepa- 
rable ; though, in actual consciousness, the two are 

* Thus Locke enumerates sensation and reflection as the two sources 
of our ideas, meaning by sensation what, in the language of Eeid, would 
be sensation and perception together. In this he is followed by Con- 
dillac. The distinction between sensation proper and perception proper 
originated with Reid ; but its most accurate development is due to his 
editor, Sir William Hamilton. From the notes of the latter the greater 
part of the remarks in the text have been taken. 



PSYCHOLOGY. G9 

always united. The bodily organism is thus the debate- 
able land between self and not-self. In one sense, my 
eye is a part of my conscious self ; for sight is an act 
of consciousness, and sight cannot exist except by means 
of the eye. In another sense, my eye is not a part of 
myself ; for a man whose eyes are put out continues to 
be the same person as before. Hence the organism, as 
the vehicle of sensation, exhibits in the same act attri- 
butes of mind and attributes of body. In the former 
point of view, the act of sensitive consciousness is 
regarded as a sensation ; in the latter, as a perception. 

Perception is sometimes defined as " the knowledge 
we obtain, by means of our sensations, of the qualities of 
matter."* This definition may be admitted, if matter is 
understood as including our own bodily organism, 
as well as the extra-organic objects to which it is 
related. The former is the only kind of matter that is 
immediately cognisable by the senses. The existence of 
a material world, distinct from, though related to, our 
organism, is made known to us, not by the senses them- 
selves, but, as will be noticed hereafter, by the faculty 
of locomotion. Sensation and perception, as above 
explained, are always correlative to each other ; every 
sensation being accompanied by a consciousness of the 
extension of the sensitive organism, and this conscious- 
ness being a perception. But, though always coexistent, 

* Stewart, Outlines of Moral Philosophy, § 15. 



70 METAPHYSICS. 

they are not proportionally coexistent. On the con- 
trary, the sensation, when it rises above a certain low 
degree of intensity, interferes with the perception of its 
relations, by concentrating the consciousness on its 
absolute affection alone. Hence Sir William Hamilton, 
from whom the above remark is taken, has enunciated 
the important rule, that, above a certain point, the stronger 
the sensation, the weaker the perception ; and the distincter 
the perception, the less obtrusive the sensation. In other 
words, though perception proper and sensation proper exist 
only as they coexist, in the degree or intensity of their 
existence they are always found in an inverse ratio to 
each other.* 

OF THE FIVE SENSES. 

Sensation and perception, according to the above 
law, coexist, though in an inverse ratio to each other, in 
each of the five senses. But in addition to the relation 
which each bears to the other, when viewed with refer- 
ence to the same sense, they are also found to be com- 
bined in different proportions when one sense is 
compared with another. In some the sensation so far 
predominates over the perception, that the sense 
manifests itself as a source of feeling rather than of 
knowledge, and has often, though erroneously, been 

* Eeid's Works, p. 880. The same rule had been in substance pre- 
viously given by Kant, Anthropologic, § 20. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 71 

regarded as consisting of the former element only. In 
others the reverse is the case ; the perceptive element, 
or cognition of an object, predominating over the sensi- 
tive element, or consciousness of a personal affection. 
In this point of view, the senses of smell and taste may 
be distinguished as especially subjective or sensational ; 
those of hearing and sight as objective or perceptional. 
Touch, inasmuch as it has no special organ, but is dif- 
fused in various degrees over the various parts of the 
body, will require a separate consideration. In other 
words, smell and taste are chiefly known as vehicles of 
the mental emotions of pleasure and pain ; hearing and 
sight, as informing us of the nature of the bodily attri- 
butes of sound and colour. Touch may contribute to 
the one or the other end, according to the part of the 
body in which it resides, and the manner in which it is 
brought into exercise* 

Of Smell. 

In Smell, as in the other senses, it is necessary to 
distinguish between the sensation itself and its object, 
which, in ordinary language, are not unfrequently con- 

* This remark of course applies only to the senses as they exist in 
the human subject. A similar general rule, indeed, probably holds good 
with regard to the lower animals ; but it is differently manifested in the 
several senses. Of the senses of taste and smell it has been observed by 
Sir William Hamilton, that " precisely as in animals them latter .senses 
gain in their objective character as means of knowledge, do they lose in 



72 METAPHYSICS. 

founded together. Thus we speak of the organ of smell, 
and of the smell of a rose, using the same term indiffer- 
ently to signify the act of inhaling an odour and the 
odour inhaled. The act of smell, apart from the physio- 
logical inquiries connected with it, requires no descrip- 
tion, being familiar to every one from his own ex- 
perience. It will be sufficient for our present purpose 
to distinguish the sensation from the accompanying per- 
ception ; and this will be best accomplished by an 
examination of the object. 

The true object of smell is to be found in the 
odorous particles in contact with the organ. It is incor- 
rect to say that we smell a rose, meaning by a rose 
the flower as seen or touched. We smell only the 
effluvia emanating from the rose and coming in contact 
with the nervous organism. What these effluvia or 
odorous emanations are in themselves, natural philo- 
sophy is unable to determine. "Although it may be 
surmised," says Dr. Carpenter, " that they consist of par- 
ticles of extreme minuteness, dissolved as it were in the 
air, and although this idea seems to derive confirmation 
from the fact that most odorous substances are volatile, 
and vice versa, yet the most delicate experiments have 

their subjective character as sources of pleasurable or painful sensations. 
To a dog, for instance, in whom the sense of smell is so acute, all odours 
seem in themselves to be indifferent " (Reid's Works, p. 863). Com- 
pare Kant, Anthropologic, § 15, whose distinction slightly varies from 
that given in the text. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 73 

failed to discover any diminution in weight, in certain 
substances (as musk) that have been impregnating with 
their effluvia a large quantity of air for several years ; 
and there are some volatile fluids, such as water, which 
are entirely inodorous."* But whatever these odorous 
particles may be, it is important to remember that they, 
and not the bodies from which they proceed, are the 
proper objects of smell ; and, consequently, that this 
sensation (and the same may be said of all the others) 
is in fact a modification of touch. Hence it is incorrect 
to speak, as Aristotle and many subsequent writers have 
spoken, of the object of smell as perceived through a 
medium, such as the atmosphere. The atmosphere is 
not the medium of communication between the sensi- 
tive organ and its object, but only the vehicle by which 
the object is brought into contact with the organ. 

Smell conveys to us no knowledge of the existence 
of extra-organic matter. The only matter of which we 
are directly conscious in this, as in other actions of 
sense, is our own organism as extended ; and this con- 
sciousness constitutes the perception of smell, as the 
consciousness of the same organism as affected consti- 
tutes the sensation. In the remarks upon the conscious- 
ness of space as the form of all sensitive intuition, 
enough has been said to explain in what sense the 
knowledge of locality and extension forms part of the 

* Principles of Human Physiology, p. 905. 



74 METAPHYSICS. 

energy of smell as it actually exists, and to show that 
the lowest degree of intelligence that is sufficient for 
sensation proper is sufficient for perception also. But 
the object perceived is not a quality of body as such, 
but only the proper action, or rather passion, of our 
nervous organism ; an action or passion of which the 
external cause is, so far as perception is concerned, 
wholly unknown, and which may even be excited in a 
similar manner by totally different causes. This is not 
so evident in the case of smell as in some others of the 
senses ; yet it is a known fact in physiology that the 
sensation of smell may be produced in the olfactory 
nerve hy electrical action without the presence of any 
odorous body. This fact is sufficient to show that the 
operation of a sense by itself does not afford any legiti- 
mate grounds for determining the qualities, or even the 
existence, of an extra-organic world. On this subject we 
shall have more to say when we come to treat of the 
distinction between the primary and secondary qualities 
of body. 

Of Taste. 

The principal characteristics of the sense of Smell 
are common to that of Taste also. The two senses 
resemble each other in being both powerful as instru- 
ments of feeling, and proportionally weak as sources of 
information. Tastes, like smells, admit of hardly any 
classification, except in respect of their relation to the 



PSYCHOLOGY. 75 

sensitive organism, as pleasant or painful. Like smell, 
too, the sensation appears to be produced by means of 
sapid particles emitted from the body, and brought into 
contact with the nerves ; and these particles, which con- 
stitute the object of the sense of taste, are in their own 
nature as little known as those of smell, and can as 
little be regarded as bearing any resemblance to the 
sensations which they excite. Taste, like smell, is thus 
a modification of touch; the object in contact with the 
organ being the sapid particles, and not, as might at 
first be supposed, the body from which those particles 
proceed. The body is in contact, not with the nerves, 
but only with their exterior covering ; and in order to 
produce the distinctive sensation of taste, it appears to 
be necessary that the sapid particles should be dissolved 
in the saliva, and thus penetrate through the invest- 
ments of the papillae into their substance.* But, not to 
enter here on questions more properly belonging to 
physiology, it will be sufficient for our present purpose 
to observe, that taste, like smell, conveys no knowledge 
of the existence of extra-organic matter, and that the 
sensation, properly so called, consists in the conscious- 
ness of the organism as affected in a particular manner, 
agreeable or disagreeable ; while the perception is to be 
found in the corresponding consciousness of the locality 
of the affection in the organism as extended. Though 

* Carpenter' s Principles of Human rhysiolotjy, p. 900. 



76 METAPHYSICS. 

these two are always to a certain extent coexistent, yet 
the former predominates so far over the latter as to form 
the principal characteristic of this class of sensations. 
For this reason, the organs of taste and smell are 
distinguished as being pre-eminently the sources of 
sensation in the strict sense of the term.* 

Of Hearing. 

In Hearing, the functions of sensation and perception 
are perhaps more nearly balanced than in any other of 
the senses. The subjective character of various sounds, 
as sources of pleasure or pain to the hearer, may be 
contrasted with their objective character, as resembling 
or differing from each other ; and as in the latter rela- 
tion this sense affords more accurate distinctions than 
those of taste and smell, so in the former the sensation 
is less capable of being carried to an extreme degree of 
pleasure or pain.t Hearing, therefore, though con- 

* Kant, Anthropologic, § 15 ; Tissot, Anthropologic, vol. i. p. 37. 

+ A lover of music might perhaps demur to the conclusion that the 
pleasures of hearing are less intense than those of taste or smell. In 
explanation, it should be remembered that we are speaking only of the 
pleasure conveyed by the sensation itself. The pleasure derived from 
music is mainly intellectual, and is chiefly derived, not from the sound 
heard in any one sensation, but from the cognition of its relation to 
others, which are not heard, but remembered ; or from associations 
which may be suggested by, but are not actually contained in, the sound 
as heard. In short, the natural sensation, which is common to all man- 
kind, must be distinguished from the acquired sensation, which is in a 
great degree the result of education. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 77 

tributing in different degrees both to enjoyment and to 
information, may be characterised as a source of the 
latter rather than of the former; and if, according to 
the rule already mentioned, the sensation and the per- 
ception are in an inverse ratio to each other, it will 
follow, that in proportion as our attention is more 
directed to the discrimination of various sounds from 
each other, we are less immediately conscious of the 
pleasure or pain which they are capable of com- 
municating. In hearing, as in the senses previously 
described, we are directly cognisant, not of the sonorous 
body, but of the change in the condition of the audi- 
tory nerve produced by contact with a medium by 
which the vibrations are transmitted (the fluid inclosed 
in the labyrinth of the ear) ; and hence hearing, like the 
other senses, is a modification of touch, and does not 
directly inform us of the existence of any other material 
object than our own nervous organism. Hence it fol- 
lows, that neither the distance nor the direction from 
which a sound proceeds is immediately perceived by 
the ear ; and this conclusion is confirmed by the facts 
connected with the exercise of this sense in its unedu- 
cated condition, as by children, and occasionally also 
by adults. The child does not appear to be conscious 
at first of the direction or distance of voices that attract 
his attention ; and a remarkable instance of the same 
kind in a grown person is mentioned by Dr. Eeid. " I 



78 METAPHYSICS. 

remember," he says, " that once lying a-bed, and having 
been put into a fright, I heard my own heart beat ; but 
I took it to be one knocking at the door, and arose and 
opened the door more than once, before I discovered that 
the sound was in my own breast." . . . . " It is 
probable," he continues, (l that, previous to all expe- 
rience, we should as little know whether a sound came 
from the right or left, from above or below, from a great 
or a small distance, as we should know whether it was 
the sound of a drum, or a bell, or a cart?"* In this 
respect the sense of hearing presents a remarkable 
analogy to that of sight ; and this property of both will 
be considered when we come to treat of acquired per- 
ceptions. 

Of Sight. 

Sight is of all the senses the most communicative 
as a vehicle of information, and consequently the one 
in which there is the least immediate consciousness of 
pleasure or pain in the exercise. Most of the know- 
ledge, however, which this sense, in its matured state, 
conveys to us, belongs to its acquired, not to its original 
power, and is the result, not of a direct perception, but 
of an inference from a perception. In sight, as in the 
other senses, the direct perception is produced by con- 
tact ; and the proper object of this sense is not the 

* Inquiry into the Human Mind, chap. iv. sec. 1 (Works, ed. 
Hamilton, p. -117). 



PSYCHOLOGY. 79 

distant body from which the rays of light are omitted 
or reflected, but the affection of the organ of sight (the 
retina and the nervous system connected with it) pro- 
duced by the rays impinging upon it. The essential 
characteristics of this affection are brightness and colour, 
which, however, are necessarily accompanied by a con- 
sciousness of extension; for a luminous point, however 
small, must itself occupy some portion of space, and 
can be perceived only as in contrast to a surround- 
ing expanse of obscure or differently-coloured surface.'"' 
The immediate object of sight being in contact with 
the extremities of the optic nerve of the person seeing, 
it is as impossible for two persons simultaneously to 
see the same object with their eyes as to touch the 
same spot with their fingers ; and every movement of 
the eye which brings a different portion of rays into 
contact with the organ, produces a different object of 
vision.t The object of vision being thus neither the 
rays alone nor the organ alone, but the organ as affected 
by the rays ; and the sensation of colour being a purely 
organic affection ; it follows that sight, like the other 
senses, gives us no immediate knowledge of an extra- 
organic world ; though it is immediately cognisant of 
extension, and therefore of matter, as presented in the 
organism itself. Hence we have no immediate per- 
ception by sight of the figure, the skc, or the distana 

* See Sir \Y. Hamilton, Rod's Jl'< rks, p. 860. t Ibid. p. 304. 



80 METAPHYSICS. 

of bodies ; and we cannot, in strict accuracy, be said 
to see a distant body, such as the sun, at all ; though in 
practice the direct perception becomes so intimately 
united with the indirect inference, that it is difficult 
to imagine that either can exist apart from the other. 
Admitting this view of the true object of sight, which 
may be regarded as established by physiological as well 
as psychological testimony* we may notice some re- 
markable contrasts between the presented object, or that 
which we actually see, and the represented object, or that 
which we appear to see. The presented object is on 
the surface of the retina : the represented object appears 
without, and at a greater or less distance from the eye. 
The presented object is of such a size as can be con- 
tained within the spectator's visual organism: the 
represented object may be many times larger than his 
whole body. The presented object is a flat surface : 
the represented object is a solid body. The presented 
object is inverted : the represented object is erect. The 
presented object is double, there being a distinct image 
on the retina of each eye : the represented object is 
generally single, the two images being in normal vision 
united into one body. These and other apparent ano- 
malies in the exercise of the senses will be discussed 
under tbe head of " Acquired Perceptions." 

* See Sir W. Hamilton, Eeid's Works, pp. 160, 301, 304, 814 ; and 
Dr. Carpenter, Principles of Human Physiology, pp. 925, 928 (4th edit.) 



PSYCHOLOGY. 81 

Of Touch and Feeling. 

Touch is regarded by many writers as the most ob- 
jective aDd the most trustworthy of all our faculties. 
It has been described as the source of our knowledge of 
the existence of an external world, and of the real mag- 
nitudes, figures, and distances of objects ; as the instructor 
of the other senses, and the corrector of their aberrations. 
It appears certain, however, that the sense of touch in 
itself is equally limited in its sphere with the rest of 
the senses, and that it can convey no other proper 
perception than that of the existence of its own or- 
ganism as extended. The sensations of touch, con- 
sidered by themselves, present no characteristics which 
can distinguish them from those of the other senses, 
as regards an immediate cognisance of the external 
world. Like smell, or sound, or light, they are affec- 
tions of the nervous system, which may be produced by 
internal as well as external causes, and which directly 
indicate no other existence than that of the organised 
sentient being.* The fact is, that in the examination of 
this faculty, philosophers have often made a two-fold 
confusion between things in themselves distinct. In 
the first place, the sense of touch proper, in which the 

* See Destutt Tracy, EMmcns cV Ideologic, p. i. elm p. 7 ; or his fol- 
lower, Brown, Lecture xxii. Both these authors, however, arc wrung in 
denying an immediate tactual perception of our own organism, though 
right as regards an extra-organic world. 

G 



82 METAPHYSICS. 

sentient subject is as passive as in any other state of 
sensation, is confounded with the faculty of locomotion, 
which originates in a voluntary act of the same subject. 
In the second place, the sense of touch having no 
special organ, but being common to all parts of the 
surface of the body, it has sometimes happened that 
perceptions have been assumed to be invariable and 
absolute, which, in truth, are relative to one part only 
of the organism, and assume a different character in 
relation to other parts. To mention only one eminent 
instance out of many, both these confusions occur 
in Bishop Berkeley's Essay towards a New Theory of 
Vision. That illustrious philosopher distinguishes be- 
tween two kinds of magnitude, — the one tangible, which 
is perceived and measured by touch ; the other visible, 
by the mediation of which the former is brought into 
view. The tangible magnitude he considers to be fixed 
and invariable, while the visible magnitude changes as 
we approach to or recede from the object. Hence he 
concludes that tangible and not visible figures are the 
objects of geometrical reasoning ; the latter having no 
other use than words have, being merely signs to sug- 
gest the former. Now, in the first place, it is obvious 
that mere touch, without the power of locomotion, can 
inform us of no other magnitude than that which cor- 
responds to the touching organ. In point of fact, it 
informs us only of the extension of the organ itself ; 



PSYCHOLOGY. 83 

but under no possible hypothesis could it inform us of 
more than the magnitude of that part of a body with 
which we are actually in contact. In the second place, 
it has been proved by experiment that the same object 
will appear of a different magnitude when in contact 
with different parts of the human body, and conse- 
quently that the sense of touch, regarded by itself, is 
not only variable, but even self-contradictory in its 
testimony. Hence it follows that the sense of touch 
alone has no pre-eminence over the other senses as a 
criterion of truth in relation to a material world beyond 
our own organism : in fact, like the other senses, it is 
silent as to the existence of such a world. Touch, how- 
ever, differs in some remarkable particulars from the 
other senses. There is no distinct organ appropriated 
to the tactual sensations alone ; and the various parts 
of the body by which these may be communicated may 
also be the instruments of other classes of sensations, all 
of which have been confounded under the general name 
of " touch " or " feeling." The object of touch proper lias 
no special name, like sound, colour, or smell ; but in it- 
self it is familiar to every one who has experienced the 
state of consciousness which results from the contact of 
his own body with another, when not sufficiently violent 
to rise into a positive sense of pleasure or pain. In this 
state there is a two-fold consciousness ; that part of the 
bodily organism being known at the same time as 



84 METAPHYSICS. 

affected and as extended. The former constitutes the 
sensation, the latter the 'perception ; and in proportion as 
the former rises to a higher consciousness of pleasure or 
pain, the latter grows feebler, though never becoming 
wholly extinct. This double state, which has no appro- 
priate name, may perhaps be distinguished in its two- 
fold character by the name of Tactual Impression. In 
addition to this may be mentioned other modes of feel- 
ing communicated, partly at least, through the same 
organs, such as those of heat and cold, which have 
sometimes been regarded as the proper objects of the 
sense of touch, and the various kinds of pain and 
pleasure produced by external applications. It will be 
sufficient for our present purpose to notice, that all of 
them belong to the class commonly known as secondary 
qualities of body ; that is to say, affections of the 
different parts of the nervous organism, which, as 
apprehended, have no resemblance to any property of 
inorganic matter, though generally caused by some 
unknown power by which that matter is capable of 
affecting our organs. 



GENERAL REMARKS ON THE FIVE SENSES. 

The psychological characteristics of the five senses in 
general, omitting those which properly belong to phy- 
siological inquiries, may be summed up as follows : — 



PSYCHOLOGY. 85 

The proper function of each and all of them is a sensa- 
tion, or affection of the nervous organism as animated ; 
which affection, however, does not, and in all proba- 
bility cannot, exist in consciousness without an accom- 
panying intellectual cognition of the same organism as 
extended or occv/pyinrj space. This cognition (the^era^'tm 
proper) is referred to the intellect rather than to the sense, 
chiefly for two reasons : Firstly, because it is not, like 
the sensation proper, limited in each case to a single 
form of sensibility, but appears as the common condi- 
tion of consciousness in all. Secondly, because it is not 
in any case the consciousness of a single object as such, 
but of a relation, either between the parts of the sen- 
sible object, viewed as out of each other, or between 
that object as a whole, and the concomitant conditions 
under which it is presented to the sense. Thus, for 
example, the rays of light in contact with the retina 
may be perceived either as forming a visible surface, 
whose parts are related to each other, or as a luminous 
spot related to the surrounding obscurity : and even a 
smell or a sound, whether themselves perceived as 
extended or not, are at all events discerned in and by 
their relation to different parts of an extended organ- 
ism* The sensation and the perception are thus each 

* Notwithstanding the general opinion of philosophers to the con- 
trary, I am inclined to think that some consciousness of extension is 
simultaneous with the earliest exercise of sensation. Of course 1 do not 



86 METAPHYSICS. 

the necessary condition of the other ; and the nnion of 
the two is requisite to constitute a state of conscious- 
ness. But consciousness is not complete, even when 
these two elements are united. The consciousness of 
any mental state (whether of sensation or otherwise) 
never does, and probably never can take place, without 
the accompanying consciousness that something else 
preceded it. This something need not be distinctly 
known as a former state of consciousness (which would 
make a beginning of consciousness impossible), just as 
the space to which the object of perception is related 

mean that this consciousness is distinct, and can be at that time sepa- 
rated by analysis from its concomitants ; but this is equally the case 
with all the characteristics of sensation. I only mean that the element 
of locality is there from the beginning, at least as distinctly as anything 
else, and that it could be detected if the sensation in its original state 
could be reproduced in a mind sufficiently developed to be capable of 
analysing it. In this respect it differs from the acquired perceptions 
properly so called, such as externality, distance, magnitude, etc., which 
may be chronologically as well as logically separated from the original 
sensation. So long as sensations are spoken of as affections of mind 
only, there is plausible ground for the opposite opinion; not so, however, 
when they are viewed in their true character, as affections, neither of 
mind alone nor of matter alone, but of an animated organism — i.e. of 
mind and matter together. Professor Mliller allows that there is a per- 
ception of the extension of the organism in sight, touch, taste, and even 
smell, though slightly, if at all in hearing. It may be conjectured, how- 
ever, that the compound action of the two ears in hearing will naturally 
give rise to some perception of extension, though this may become obli- 
terated in acquired perception, from the attention being withdrawn from 
it to other sources of information. (See Baby's translation of Midler's 
Elements of Physiology, pp. 1073, 1075, 1086.) 



PSYCHOLOGY. 87 

need not be distinctly discerned as containing other 
objects; but every act of consciousness as such is 
accompanied by the conviction, indefinite it may be, of 
something having gone before, just as a coloured spot 
in sight is perceived as having something surrounding 
it* In other words, every act of consciousness, as such, 
is presented as a change in the state of our existence, not 
as the beginning of that existence, and thus implies the 
continuous existence of a permanent self, presented in 
and through the several modes of consciousness, but 
not identified with any. We can have no knowledge 
of an abstract self apart from its successive states of 
consciousness, nor yet of any one of those states, save 
as a mode of the existence of one and the same indivi- 
sible self. The sensitive consciousness is thus revealed 

* "Puisque reveille de l'etourdissement on s'appercoit de ses percep- 
tions, il f;iut bien qu'onenait eu imniediatement auparavant, quoiqu'on 
ne s'en soit point appercu ; car line perception ne sauroit venir naturelle- 
nient, que d'une autre perception, comnie un mouvement ne peut venir 
naturellement que d'un mouvement " (Leibnitz, Monadologie, sec. 23). 
This position, which Leibnitz maintained on metaphysical and psycho- 
logical grounds, is confirmed by the researches of physiology, which tend 
to show that consciousness has a physical as well as an intellectual 
growth ; that impressions may be made on the organism which may leave 
perceptible traces in the subsequent development of consciousness, 
without having been themselves present to consciousness at all. (See 
Carpenter's Human Physiology, p. 818.) This may, perhaps, help to 
explain the apparent paradox, on the one hand, that consciousness must 
have had a beginning in time, and, on the other, that an absolutely first 
act of consciousness is inconceivable. Thus time is the universal form 
of consciousness as such. 



88 METAPHYSICS. 

to us as composed of three elements ; a permanent self, 
having a sensitive organism extended in space, and with 
successive affections of that organism taking place in 
time. None of these elements, apart from the rest, can 
be presented or represented in consciousness ; and the 
distinction between sense and intelligence is thus verbal 
only, not real, constituting, like the concave and convex 
circumference of a circle, different sides of the same 
consciousness, but incapable in any act of thought of 
being considered apart from each other. In the words 
of Sir William Hamilton — "It is manifestly impos- 
sible to discriminate with any rigour sense from intel- 
ligence. Sensitive apprehension is in truth only the 
recognition by intelligence of the phenomena presented 
in or through its organs.* 

The proper sensibles — smell, taste, sound, colour, and 
tactual sensation — all belong to the class commonly 
called secondary qualities of body ; which are in reality 
affections of the nervous organism, which have no 
resemblance to any attribute of inorganic bodies. It is 
true that, in their normal state, they are excited by the 
presence of such bodies ; but that in themselves, as 
apprehended, they are states of the nervous organism, 
and not qualities of other bodies, is evident from the 
fact that they may be abnormally called into existence 
by any circumstance which produces the appropriate ner- 
* Keid's Works, p. 878. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 89 

vous action, even when the ordinary bodily correlative is 
not present. In fact, as Professor Miiller has observed, 
"external agencies can give rise to no kind of sensation 
which cannot also be 'produced by internal causes, exciting 
changes in the condition of our nerves." * Such is the 
case in the well-known phenomena of dreams, of spec- 
tral illusions, of ringing in the ears, of bitterness in the 
mouth, etc ; to which may be added the several artificial 
means by which various sensations may be produced — 
light and colours by pressure on the optic nerves, ring- 
ing by a blow on the ear, and the sensations of all the 
senses by electricity. t Similar though less striking 
evidence to the same point is furnished by the familiar 
instances of the sensation remaining in the organism 
when the body is withdrawn, or the communication 
intercepted. Thus a luminous body, passing rapidly 
backwards and forwards before the eye, appears as a 
continuous line of light ; a rapid succession of sounds 
will produce a continuous tone ; the spectrum of a bright 
object may be distinctly seen after the eyes are shut, etc. 
It is manifest, therefore, that the senses cannot in any case 
furnish direct evidence of the existence or properties of 
an extra-organic world ; for, even if we are compelled by 
a law of our constitution to suppose the existence of an 

* Elements of Physiology, translated by Baly, p. 1059. 

f See Mutter's Elements of Physiology, p. 1004; Carpenter's Pnwt- 
ciples of Human Physiology, p. 8S8 ; Abercrombie's Intellectual Powers, 
p. 61. 



90 METAPHYSICS. 

external cause of our internal states, such a supposition 
is representative, not presentative, — suggested by, not 
contained in the sensation ; it gives us no knowledge of 
the nature of the cause which it suggests, and in some 
instances, as has been shown, is deceptive even in sug- 
gesting its existence. 

"What, then, it may be asked, is the nature of our 
sensations as thus described? Are they affections of 
mind, or of body, or of both ? On the one hand, con- 
sciousness, in all its modes, seems manifestly to be a 
state of mind. On the other hand, sensitive conscious- 
ness appears with the concomitant condition of exten- 
sion, which is an attribute of body. The general voice 
of modern philosophers has pronounced that sensations, 
as such, belong to mind, and not to body. This is as- 
serted both by those who admit and by those who deny 
the existence of perceptible primary qualities of body in 
addition to the mental sensation.* And rightly, so long 
as by body is meant something distinct from our own 

* See Descartes, Principia, iv. 197 ; Malebranche, Recherche, 1. i. 
ch. x. sqq. ; Locke, Essay, b. ii. ch. 8 ; Condillac, Traite des Sensa- 
tions, p. iv. ch. 5 ; Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, i. 3 ; 
Keid, Inquiry, ch. vi. sec. 4, 5, 6 ; Stewart, Essays, ii. chap. ii. sec. 
2 ; Brown, Lectures, xxii. Leibnitz speaks more guardedly on this 
question, — " II est vrai que la douleur ne ressemble pas aux mouvemens 
d'une epingle, mais elle peut ressembler fort bien aux mouvemens que 
cette epingle cause dans notre corps, et representer ces mouvemens dans 
Tame, comme je ne doute nullement qu'elle ne fasse" (Nouvcaux 
Essais, 1. ii. ch. 8). 



PSYCHOLOGY. 91 

organism ; but wrongly, or at least inaccurately in lan- 
guage, so long as no distinction is made between body 
as brute matter and body as part of a sentient being. 
A dead body, though its eyes are open, has no sensation 
of colour ; so far, sight is an affection of mind rather 
than of body. But a living man, if his eyes are put out, 
is equally deprived of the sensation : so far it appears 
to belong to body rather than to mind ; for mind in its 
purest sense, — the abstract, immaterial, personal ego, — 
cannot be conceived as destroyed, or even as in any way 
diminished by the deprivation of a bodily organ. But 
the above inaccuracy of language assumes more than a 
verbal importance, when it is made, as is sometimes the 
case, the foundation of theories of perception, as though 
the distinction which it indicates were strictly, not 
merely approximately, true. Thus it is argued that 
we can have no immediate perception of extension in 
space, " because it is not explained how the mind, which 
alone can have sensation or knowledge, and which cer- 
tainly is not square itself, is to be made acquainted 
with the squareness of its own corporeal organ, or of the 
foreign body."* The whole force of the reasoning, and, 
at the same time, its whole fallacy, lies in the word alone. 
Mind is not alone capable of sensation : for it is sentient 
only in so far as it animates a bodily organism. That 
a disembodied spirit has consciousness we must indeed 
* Brown, Lectures, xxii. 



92 METAPHYSICS. 

believe ; — at least it is impossible to conceive how 
spiritual existence can be otherwise manifested ; — but, 
at the same time, it is impossible to conceive such con- 
sciousness as at all resembling our own, at any rate in the 
particular phenomena which are conveyed by means of 
the senses. Sensation, then, is not an affection of mind 
alone, nor of matter alone, but of an animated organism 
— i.e. of mind and matter united * How this union is 
effected ; whether the soul as a substance is one or 
many : whether it has or has not a local habitation ; 
whether, in short, we have any knowledge at all of a pure 
immaterial being, apart from its modes of consciousness 
when embodied : — these and similar questions belong 
to the Ontological branch of Metaphysics. At present 
we are concerned only with the phenomena of sensation, 
and with the soul as the subject of those phenomena in 
and through its connection with the body. In this re- 
spect the soul cannot be assigned to any peculiar bodily 
organ as its seat, but, as manifesting its existence in sen- 
sation, must be regarded as present in all the sensitive 
organs alike. t 

* In this respect the language of Aristotle is more accurate than that 
of the majority of modern philosophers, — 'E7re2 8' oflre rrjs fax?)* idcovrb 
aladdveadac o&re rod a do pharos (o5 yap i) bvvapus, toijtov teal rj eve py eta ' r) 5£ 
Xeyo/iepr) atadrjais, <Jos evepyeca, Kcvrjcis ns Std rod cncpLaros ttjs ipvxys earl) 
<bavepbv ws o'ore ttjs ^vxys to irddos tbiov, oi)r' dxpvxov crupta hvvarbv aladd- 
veadcu (De Somno, chap. 1, sec. 5). 

f See Miiller's Elements of Physiology, p. 1 335. In the above remarks, 
and throughout this treatise, no notice has been taken of the different 



PSYCHOLOGY. 93 

To the above account of sensation and perception an 
obvious objection presents itself, which it is necessary to 
consider before proceeding further. " The perception as 
it ought to be," it may be urged, " is very different from 
the perception as it is. "VVe are told that we only per- 
ceive our own organism ; we are conscious of actually 
perceiving things external to our organism. "We do 
not see the image on the retina ; w T e see the object at 
a distance from the eye. Even in hearing and smell, 
the object of which we are actually conscious is not 
presented as an affection of the nerves, but as situated 
in and proceeding from a distant body." The answer to 
this objection is to be found in the fact, that in the 
actual exercise of our senses, in their matured state, we 
never perform a pure act of perception, but one of per- 

functions of the nerves and the sensorium in sensation. This question 
is confessedly one of the most difficult in physiology, and, in its proper 
place in that science, one of the most important. But in reference to 
the present remarks its decision is of little consequence. The visible 
image, or other sensible impression, is not itself transmitted to the sen- 
sorium ; and the irritation of the interior nervous system can only serve 
to arouse the attention to the affection localised at the surface. The 
notion of a seat of the soul, in the literal sense of the term, is utterly 
meaningless to any but a materialist ; and all that the minutest anatomy 
can hope to discover is the material occasion which acts as the immediate 
stimulant to consciousness. But the consciousness, once aroused. La as 
capable of acting in one part of the system as in another, and is, in fact, 
present wherever it acts. This is expressed with philosophical accuracy 
in the words of St. Augustine : — " Ideo simplicior estcorpore, quia non 
mole diflunditur per spatium loci, aed in unoquoque corpore, et in toto 
tota est, et in qualibet ejus parte tota est" (Dc Trinitate, vi. 6). 



94 METAPHYSICS. 

ception united with something else. It is as certain as 
any fact of science can be, that the perception of dis- 
tance is not originally conveyed by the eye, but is an 
inference of the understanding derived from certain 
concomitant visible phenomena, principally from the 
degree of distinctness of the colour and outline of the 
object. Yet of this inference we are never conscious in 
the exercise of our matured senses, but appear to see the 
distance of objects as immediately as their colour. The 
most ordinary judgments apparently derived from sense 
are instances of the same kind. When I say, " I see a 
horse," in reality I see nothing of the kind. Even 
granting for the moment that the external object is seen, 
it can be seen only as a coloured body of a certain 
figure. That the coloured body before me is a horse is 
not a perception of the sight, but a judgment of the 
understanding ; a judgment which implies acts of 
memory, of comparison, of conception, etc. Yet we are 
not conscious of the data from which we make the 
inference, but refer the entire result to the act of sight 
alone. These instances sufficiently show the necessity 
of distinguishing between original and acquired percep- 
tions ; for which purpose we must first consider the 
operations of that faculty to which our intuitions of 
external objects as such properly belong. 



PSYCHOLOGY. r 



OF THE LOCOMOTIVE FxYCULTY. 

The Locomotive Faculty, which we have next to con- 
sider, differs from the Senses, both in other respects, and 
especially in the circumstance, that in its exercise, and 
partly also in its results, it is dependent upon the will 
of the person exercising it. By this it is not meant 
that the will is in all cases consciously exercised ; that 
all motion is the result of a knowledge of two alterna- 
tives, and a deliberate preference of one of them. This 
is not always the case in the most undeniably voluntary 
acts performed in the maturity of our faculties. A man 
in the midst of a walk, when engaged in conversation or 
thought, is not distinctly conscious of each successive 
movement of his limbs ; yet there can be no doubt that 
the acts are his own, as much as when he is attending to 
and conscious of the exertion, and that, in either case, it 
depends on himself to continue or discontinue the 
motion. How far the will itself is free or determined 
by antecedent causes, is a question which cannot be 
considered here ; but, whatever theory we may adopt 
upon this point, as regards the actions of men or of 
brutes, there is an obvious difference between saving, 
" You may bring a horse to the water, but you cannot 
make him drink ;" and saying, " Y r ou may fire a cannon 
in his ear, but you cannot make him hear ;'' or, <( You 



96 METAPHYSICS. 

may lay on the whip, but you cannot make him feel." 
This difference, whatever amount of liberty it may 
imply, is all that is insisted upon in distinguishing 
between the exercise of the locomotive faculty and 
that of the senses. 

It is the locomotive faculty which first informs us 
immediately of the existence and properties of a ma- 
terial world exterior to our organism. This exterior 
world manifests itself in the form of something resisting 
our volition ; and to this general head of resistance may 
be reduced the whole of those attributes which exterior 
bodies immediately exhibit in their relation to our 
organism ; namely, gravity, cohesion, repulsion, and 
inertia. This consciousness of our locomotive energy 
being resisted by something external, though in practice 
accompanied by the sensation of touch, is so far distinct 
from that sensation that either may be conceived as 
taking place without the other. The sensation of touch 
is a consciousness of an irritation of the nerves spread 
over the surface of the skin ; a consciousness which 
experience may teach us to connect with a pressure from 
without, but which may be, and sometimes is, also com- 
municated from within, and which has no immediate 
relation to the will of the sentient person. The con- 
sciousness of resistance, on the other hand, implies a 
volition to move the limb ; and this volition may be con- 
ceived as impeded externally without any accompanying 



PSYCHOLOGY. 97 

organic feeling. The various qualities of the body, 
moreover, are manifested in proportion to the amount of 
volition exercised. A slight effort makes known to us 
the existence of a resisting body : a stronger or more 
continued effort is followed by a consciousness of a 
more vigorous resistance, or of a yielding on the part of 
the opposing body, either wholly or in a certain direc- 
tion. Hence we obtain a knowledge of the attributes of 
hardness or softness, of mobility or immobility. All 
these are different manifestations of a relation between 
self and not-self ; between an organised body acted 
upon by the will, and a foreign body in antagonism to 
it. This consciousness of resistance to our voluntary 
motion is something very different from that of a mere 
inability to move, such as may take place when a stroke 
of paralysis destroys the power of the will over the 
bodily motions. We have in it, not the mere negative 
consciousness of will not followed by motion, but the 
positive consciousness of will followed by motion, and 
that motion resisted from without. In this relation both 
elements are equally loresented, and one of them is the 
external body. 

The manner in which the locomotive energy may be 
supposed originally to exert itself, and the foundation 
which by such exertion would be laid for the education 
of the sensitive consciousness, even before the latter is 
called into actual existence, has been graphically de- 

ii 



98 METAPHYSICS. 

scribed by Professor Miiller, in language which I will 
not attempt to weaken by alteration ; though I may 
remark, in quoting it, that that eminent physiologist has 
hardly marked with sufficient accuracy the distinction 
between the sense of resistance and that of touch pro- 
perly so called ; and consequently has made some con- 
fusion between the objective and the subjective, the pre- 
servative and the representative consciousness. " If we 
imagine a human being in which — as in the foetus in 
utero, for example — the sense of vision has never re- 
ceived any impressions, and in which sensations of 
touch merely have been excited by impressions made 
upon its body from without, it is evident that the 
first obscure idea excited would be no other than that 
of a sentient passive self, in contradistinction to some- 
thing acting upon it* The uterus, which compels 
the child to assume a determined position, and gives 
rise to sensations in it, is also the means of ex- 
citing in the sensorium of the child the consciousness 
of something thus distinct from itself and external to 
it. But how is the idea of two exteriors — of that which 

* Perhaps it would be more correct to say only, " a sentient passive 
self, modified in a certain manner." So far as touch alone, without 
motion, is concerned, it may be doubted whether there can be any con- 
sciousness of a something exterior to self. It may perhaps be possible 
to distinguish the one conscious self from its successive modifications ; 
but the relation thus manifested can hardly be described as one of interior 
and exterior. The sentient self is on each occasion of sensation present 
in the organism, and has no conscious relation to anything beyond. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 99 

the limbs of the child's body form in relation to its 
internal self and of the true exterior world — developed ? 
In a twofold manner: In the first place, the child 
governs the movement of its limbs, and thus per- 
ceives that they are instruments subject to the use 
and government of its internal self ; while the resistance 
which it meets with around is not subject to its will, and 
therefore gives it the idea of an absolute exterior. 
Secondly, The child will perceive a difference in the 
sensations produced according as the parts of its own 
body touch each other, or as one part of the body only 
meets with resistance from without. In the first in- 
stance, where one arm, for example, touches the other, 
the resistance is afforded by a part of the child's own 
body, and the limb thus giving the resistance becomes 
the subject of sensation as well as the other. The two 
limbs are in this case external objects of perception and 
percipient at the same time. In the second instance, 
the resisting body will be represented to the mind as 
something external and foreign to the living body, and 
not subject to the internal self. Thus will arise in the 

There may, indeed, be a consciousness of a local relation between dif- 
ferent parts of the body successively affected ; but these, though exterior 
to each other, will not thus be recognised as exterior to the conscious 
self. The relation of interior to exterior can only exist between two 
bodies occupying space ; and, in this case, can only arise when we become 
conscious of the double non ego, of the bodily organism in relation to 
some other body. This will be the consequent, not the antecedent, <»f 
locomotion. 



100 



METAPHYSICS. 



mind of the child the idea of a resistance which one part 
of its own body can offer to another part of its own body, 
and at the same time the idea of a resistance offered to 
its body by an absolute exterior. In this way is gained 
the idea of an external world as the cause of sensa- 
tions* Though the sensations of the being actually 
inform him only of the states of himself, of his . nerves 
and of his skin, acted upon by external impressions, j - 
yet henceforth the idea of the external cause becomes 
inseparably associated with the sensation of touch ;\ and 
such is the condition of sensation in the adult. If we 
lay our hand upon the table, we become conscious, on 
a little reflection, that we do not feel the table, but 
merely that part of the skin which the table touches ;§ 
but, without this reflection, we confound the sensation 
of the part of the skin which has received the im- 
pression with the idea of the resistance, and we 
maintain boldly that we feel the table itself, which 

* Kather "as existing and resisting our volitions." To describe the 
external world merely as the cause of sensations is to make it no more 
than a hypothetical object, invented to account for certain states of the 
subject. 

t True of the sensations proper, but not of the locomotive volition ; 
and, in the case of the former, the impressions need not be external. 

Z How can it be associated, unless it has been first given without 
association ; i.e. in itself, and not merely in its effect ? Otherwise there 
is a relation with only one related term. 

§ True of the mere feeling, but not of the consciousness that arises 
when we try to penetrate into the substance of the table and find our- 
selves unable to do so. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 101 

is not the case. If the hand be now moved over a 
greater extent of the table's surface, the idea of a larger 
object than the hand can cover is obtained. If, to 
encompass the resisting object, the hand require to be 
moved in different directions and planes, the idea of sur- 
faces applied to each other in different directions is 
conceived, and thus the notion of an external solid body 
occupying space is obtained."* 

From the consideration of the locomotive faculty, we 
should pass, by a natural transition, to that of the ac- 
quired perceptions, in which the information originally 
furnished by this faculty is transferred to other modes 
of consciousness. Before taking this step, however, it 
will be necessary to say a few words on another organ 
of sensation, which, in the opinion of some eminent 
authorities, is entitled to contest with the locomotive 
faculty the claim of giving rise to our knowledge of the 
properties of external matter. 

OF THE MUSCULAR SENSE. 

The motion of a limb, whether free or resisted, bei 
accompanied by certain sensations arising" from the con- 
traction or relaxation of the muscles, it has been some- 

* Midler's Elements of Physiology, p. 1080, Bdy's translation. The 
notion of a solid body occupying Bpaoe, may, however, arise from simpli r 

data than those supposed in the last sentence, This will he considered 
hereafter, when we treat of the primary qualities of body. 



102 METAPHYSICS. 

times thought that to these sensations, and not to the 
motion which they accompany, is owing our earliest 
apprehension of the fact of external extension and re- 
sistance.* A few words on this question will be neces- 
sary to complete this portion of our inquiry. 

In the first place, it is unquestionable that these 
muscular sensations exist, and that they are distinct 
from the proper impressions due to the five commonly 
acknowledged senses. The feeling of fatigue, for ex- 
ample, belongs, partly at least, to this class ; but this 
feeling is only an increased degree of one which accom- 
panies every muscular exertion, and which, in its more 
moderate forms, is pleasant instead of painful. When 
we move a limb after a sufficient rest, the motion is 
accompanied by a sensation similar to, though less in- 
tense than, that which ensues when it is moved after 
long previous exercise. To the same class belongs the 
sensation which accompanies the act of stretching, which 
is only another degree of the feeling of muscular ten- 
sion^ In the second place, these sensations may in 
some cases be the means of indicating to us the fact of 
the motion ; and such is probably the office which they 

* See Brown, Lecture xxii. In giving a prominent place to the 
muscular sensation, and taking but slight notice of the volition by which 
it is accompanied, Brown departs from the teaching of his master Destutt 
Tracy, and in the same degree vitiates the theory. 

+ See Brown, Lecture xxii. ; and Mill, Analysis of the Human Mind, 
chap. i. sec. 7. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 103 

perform in the earliest exercises of the locomotive 
faculty. As at that stage of our existence our other 
senses have not yet come into operation, or, at least, 
have not heen developed to that degree which suffices 
for the perception of foreign bodies, it is clear that the 
fact of our limb being in motion must be made known 
to us by some feeling connected with the act itself, not 
by observation of it from any other centre. We cannot 
as yet see that our limb moves : we must therefore, in 
some manner, feel that it does so ; and this, in point of 
fact, is effected by means of the muscular sensations of 
the limb itself. * 

But this is not sufficient to convey a knowledge of 
external bodies. The muscular sensations, viewed by 
themselves, are, like all other sensations, merely the 
consciousness of a particular state of our organism, and 
do not, any more than other sensations, give us a direct 
perception of the cause from which they proceed. The 

* It does not, however, follow that the muscular sensation is in this 
case the only possible evidence of the motion. On this point Sir William 
Hamilton observes: — " Supposing all muscular feeling abolished (the 
power of moving the muscles at will remaining, however, entire), I hold 
that the consciousness of the mental motive energy, and of the g] 
or less degree of such energy requisite, in different circumstances, to ac- 
complish our intention, would of itself enable us always to perceive the 
fart, and in sonic degree to measure the amount, of any resistance to our 
voluntary movements, howbeit the concomitance of certain feelings with 
the different states of muscular tension renders this cognition not only 
easier, but, in fact, obtrudes it upon our attention" fBeid's Works, 
p. 864). 



104 METAPHYSICS. 

muscular sensation that arises when our motion is 
resisted is not a consciousness of resistance., but of a 
state of our organism caused by resistance ; and it is the 
state, and not the causation, that we immediately feel ; 
the latter, as in the case of the other senses, being not 
presented in the sensitive act, but represented as a conse- 
quence of association. Hence, while we grant the exist- 
ence and the importance of the muscular sensations, we 
are as far as ever from the knowledge of an extra-organic 
world. This knowledge depends, not on the relation in 
which that world stands to our sensations, but on that in 
which it stands to our volitions. We will in the first 
instance to move a limb : the sensation may inform us 
that the limb obeys our volition ; but it is the motion, 
and not the sensation, which is resisted by the external 
body. The two are unlike in all their most important 
features. The sensation is chiefly, if' not entirely, a 
passive state ; the motion is an active energy. The 
sensation is in the organism ; the motion is derived from 
the will. The sensation conveys an immediate know- 
ledge of the ego ; the motion, when resisted, conveys an 
immediate knowledge of the non ego. I am conscious at 
one time of a voluntary effort to move ; I am conscious 
also (whether through the muscular sensation or other- 
wise) that I have overcome the inertia of the limb, and 
put it in motion ; and I am conscious of the amount of 
effort necessary to effect this purpose. This conscious- 



PSYCHOLOGY. 105 

ness contains, as its condition, a concomitant intellectual 
apprehension of space, without which the effort to move 
could not be made or willed; and this apprehension 
appears to be original and inexplicable, as it is implied 
in the first consciousness of a power of locomotion, prior 
to its actual exercise. I next become conscious that the 
motion is resisted from without, and that an additional 
effort is needed to overcome the resistance and continue 
the motion. This is an immediate perception of a rela- 
tion between self and not-self between the resisted effort 
and the resisting object. In this the voluntary energy 
is the primary source of knowledge ; the muscular sen- 
sation, the secondary, and possibly the contingent accom- 
paniment. The language of Destutt Tracy — "II reste 
done constant que le mouvement volontaire nous donne 
seul un vrai sentiment de resistance"* — can hardly be 
called exaggerated. 



OF THE PRIMARY AND SECONDARY QUALITIES OF BODY. 

The theory of the action of our senses, and of their 
relation to the material world, would be incomplete 
without some notice of a famous distinction which has 
played an important part in various systems of philo- 
sophy, — the distinction between Primary and Secondary 

* ElCmcns iV Ideologic, p. 1G2. 



106 METAPHYSICS. 

Qualities of Body. The history of this distinction, under 
various names, in ancient and modern times, has been 
given at considerable length in a learned note appended 
to Sir William Hamilton's edition of Eeid's Works, to 
which we must content ourselves with referring. Our 
limits will only allow a few remarks on the nature of 
the distinction itself, and its relation to the theory of 
perception which has been adopted in the preceding 
pages. 

By modern philosophers, the distinction between 
these two classes of qualities has been based, sometimes 
on a psychological, sometimes on a physical principle. 
In the former point of view, the primary qualities have 
been distinguished as those which cannot by any act of 
thought be separated from the conception of body, being 
essential to that conception itself, in whatever relation it 
may be viewed ; while the secondary qualities are mere 
modifications of the primary, by which the bodies are 
enabled to produce certain sensations in us. In the 
latter point of view, the primary qualities are considered 
to be such as really exist, in the bodies themselves, in 
the same manner in which they are perceived by us ; 
whereas the secondary qualities are but the occult 
causes of certain sensations, which, as experienced, bear 
no resemblance to the powers by which they are produced. 
Under the former class are comprehended extension and 
solidity, to which have sometimes been added figure, 






PSYCHOLOGY. 107 

number, motion and rest,* hardness and softness, rough- 
ness and smoothness. t 

Against the first of the above principles of distinction 
it has been objected that some secondary qualities, as 
well as the primary, are inseparable from the conception 
of body. Thus colour, of some kind or other, accom- 
panies every perception, and even every imagination of 
extended substance ; and of two contradictory qualities, 
one or other must be attributed to every object. J 
Against the second principle it may be objected that, 
even if we admit that in perception we are immediately 
conscious of the existence of a body as presented, still 
we know not what any of its qualities may be in them- 
selves, out of relation to our faculties. Both mind and 
matter may be immediately present in an act of percep- 
tion, yet the object perceived may be, like a chemical 
compound, the result of a relation between the two, and 
may resemble neither of the elements from which it is 
produced. We can never be certain how much of the 
perceived phenomena of a body depends on the constitu- 
tion of our own faculties, and how much belongs to the 
absolute nature of the body irrespectively of its relation 
to us. To determine this point, it would be necessary 
that we should perceive it without our faculties. 

* As by Locke, Essay, b. ii. chap. viii. sec. 9. 

+ As by Reid, Inquiry, chap. v. sec. 4; and by Stewart, E.*says, 
i. chap. ii. sec. 2. 

t Sir W. Hamilton, Reid's Works, p. 839. 



108 METAPHYSICS. 

Yet both the above principles of distinction are funda- 
mentally sound, though, to free them from misapprehen- 
sion, they require a somewhat different explanation and 
application from that which is usually given. The "body 
which is directly perceived by the senses is not inani- 
mate matter, but our own organism ; and of this, as 
extended, we have an immediate consciousness in every 
act of perception. Hence the distinction between pri- 
mary and secondary qualities as perceived by the senses, 
if it is tenable at all, must be tenable only in relation to 
certain qualities existing in our own organism. We can 
therefore no longer distinguish between attributes exist- 
ing in bodies, and powers of affecting our sensitive 
organism ; for the hody in relation to which the distinc- 
tion has to be made is not that which affects, but that 
which is affected. In this point of view, it is obvious 
that colour, for example, is a quality of body, as well as 
extension. Our visual organism is presented in the act 
of sight as extended and as coloured. We cannot say 
that the extension belongs to the inanimate, the colour 
to the animated body ; for of the inanimate body the 
senses tell us nothing. Nor yet can we describe the 
one as an attribute of body per se, the other of body in 
relation to our senses ; for the whole nervous organism, 
as such, exists for us only as it is perceived, and is per- 
ceived only as it is affected. Destroy or alter the 
faculty of sense ; and the whole organism of sight, as it 



PSYCHOLOGY. 109 

is perceived in sensation, exists no more, or exists in a 
different manner. 

The true ground of distinction between primary and 
secondary qualities of body is, we think, to be found in 
the fact, that some attributes of body are presented in 
the exercise of all the senses alike, while others are 
peculiar to one sense only. In every act of sensation 
we are conscious of our own organism as extended or 
occupying space. In the act of sight we are conscious 
of it as coloured. The two impressions, when once 
acquired, may be inseparable from each other ; but the 
first may be acquired without the second, as in the 
case of a man totally blind, who would have a know- 
ledge of extension but not of colour.* Hence the former 
class of attributes are essential to our conception of 
body, and indeed form that conception : the latter are 
accidental in so far as the conception of body may exist 
without them ; though, when the association between 
the two has once been formed, it may not be possible to 
separate them by any subsequent act of thought. 

We are thus brought back to the old Aristotelian 
distinction between common and proper scnsiblcs, which 

* Sir W. Hamilton asserts that "light and darkness, white and 
black, are, in this relation, all equally eolours ;" and this is true, when 
the sensation of both has been once given. But if objects are only dis- 
cerned by difference, a man totally Mind could not be said to have a con- 
sciousness of darkness as such, or to associate Its idea with the positive 
impressions derived from the other senses. Ordinary blindness, how- 
ever, is not a total privation of the sense of colour. 



110 METAPHYSICS. 

has been pointed out by Sir "William Hamilton, as in 
substance identical with the modern distinction between 
primary and secondary qualities. In this point of view, 
the secondary qualities of body may be easily indicated. 
To this class belong all the affections peculiar to certain 
parts of our sensitive organism, whether as the proper 
objects of the respective senses, or as the accidental 
accompaniments of certain sensations. " Such are the 
idiopathic affections of our several organs of sense, as 
colour, sound, flavour, savour, and tactual sensation ; 
such are the feelings from heat, electricity, galvanism, 
etc. ; nor need it be added, such are the muscular and 
cutaneous sensations which accompany the exercise of 
the locomotive faculty. Such, though less directly the 
result of foreign causes, are titillation, sneezing, horri- 
pilation, shuddering, the feeling of what is called setting 
the teeth on edge, etc. etc. Such, in fine, are all the 
various sensations of bodily pleasure and pain deter- 
mined by the action of external stimuli."* 

The primary qualities require somewhat more con- 
sideration to determine them. They are the universal 
attributes of body, common to every mode of its exist- 
ence as an object of consciousness. Hence they are not, 
properly speaking, known by sense, but by intellect, 
having no special organ adapted to their perception, but 
being equally present in every exercise of the bodily 

* Sir W. Hamilton, Eeid's Works, p. 854 (slightly altered from the 
original). 



PSYCHOLOGY. Ill 

senses. Hence, too, they cannot, in their pure form, be 
depicted to the sense or the imagination, but require, in 
every instance, to be united with one or other of the 
secondary qualities which are the proper objects of the 
several senses. Pure extension, for example, is not an 
object of sight or touch, but only visible or tangible 
extension ; i. e. extension combined with colour or 
tactual sensation. The perception of the primary 
qualities, in its original manifestation, is in fact an 
intellectual cognition of the relations between the 
several parts of our sensitive organism ; and, as such, 
both implies a present consciousness of that organism 
as affected, and is implied by it. For on the one hand, 
the consciousness of a relation implies the simultaneous 
consciousness of the objects related ; and, on the other 
hand, the consciousness of an object as such implies so 
much of relation to other objects as is necessary to its 
distinct cognition. A coloured surface, for instance, can 
only be perceived as composed of several coloured 
points exterior to each other ; and a coloured point can 
only be discerned as forming a portion of a coloured 
surface. The primary and secondary qualities are thus 
necessarily perceived in conjunction with eacli other ; 
though the primary constitute the permanent element, 
implied in the cognition of body in general ; the second- 
ary constitute the variable element implied in the cog- 
nition of body by this or that sense. 



112 METAPHYSICS. 

The primary qualities of body may be all included 
under the one general head of relation to space. This 
implies the twofold condition of — 1. Solidity, or occu- 
pation of space- in the three dimensions of length, 
breadth, and thickness ; 2. Being contained in space, or 
surrounded by space on every side.* Though the sen- 
sible affection, as confined to the surface of the organism, 
may appear at first sight to indicate two dimensions 
only, yet it is obvious, on a moment's reflection, that the 
intelligible relation of parts to parts which necessarily 
accompanies the affection, is only possible under the 
condition of a simultaneous immediate consciousness of 
solidity. Space, in all its dimensions, is the form of all 
our perceptions of sense : a surface, or even a visible 
point, can only be perceived as occupying a portion of 
space, and as surrounded by space on all sides of it. 
It is impossible to conceive a surface as having no space 
behind or before it, or as not breaking the continuity of 
that space, and thus occupying a part of it. The geo- 
metrical line which has length without breadth, and the 
geometrical surface which has length and breadth with- 
out thickness, are, as objects of perception, equally in- 
conceivable with the geometrical point which has no 
magnitude ;t though it is possible logically to distin- 

* Sir W. Hamilton, Eeid's Works, p. 847. 

+ This is perfectly consistent with the fact, to be noticed hereafter, 
that the actual perception of solidity by sight is not original, but ac- 
quired. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 113 

guish between these various elements of body, and to 
ascertain the special properties of each. We have in 
this circumstance a further confirmation of the character 
which has throughout these pages been assigned to 
space, as an a priori condition of consciousness, mani- 
fested on the occasion of experience, but in no way to be 
evolved from it. 

From the general attribute of solidity or occupation 
of space, in its two constituent features of geometrical 
solidity or trinal extension, and physical solidity or ulti- 
mate incompressibility, Sir W. Hamilton has deduced 
the three necessary relations of member or divisibility, 
size or magnitude, and shape or figure ; and from the 
correlative attribute of being contained in space, those 
of mobility and situation. These may be all regarded as 
primary qualities of body, involved in, and deducible 
by analysis from, the conception of body in general as 
presented in every act of sensitive perception. 

Those attributes which are immediately perceived as 
existing in extra-organic bodies are distinguished by 
Sir W. Hamilton under the name of secundo-primary 
qualities. These are not essential constituents of the 
conception of body in general, but attributes contin- 
gently observed to exist in bodies in relation to our 
organism. They are all contained under the general 
head of resistance or pressure, and are immediately dis- 
cerned only by means of the locomotive faculty. To 

I 



114 METAPHYSICS. 

this general head belong the attributes of weight, cohesion, 
inertia, and repulsion, all of which are made known to us 
as different modes of resistance to our locomotive energy. 
It is by the apprehension of the secundo-primary, not by 
that of the primary qualities, that we immediately learn 
the existence and nature of an extra-organic world. We 
are conscious, to use the words of Sir W. Hamilton, 
" that our locomotive energy is resisted, and not resisted 
by aught in our organism itself. In the consciousness 
of being thus resisted is involved, as a correlative, the 
consciousness of a resisting something external to our 
organism. Both are therefore conjunctly apprehended."" 1 
Tor a more detailed exposition of this important subject, 
which our limits do not permit us to treat at greater 
length, the reader is referred to the dissertations of Sir 
William Hamilton. f It only remains for us to sum up 
briefly the substance of the above remarks. 

By primary qualities of body must not be understood 
qualities of body per se, as it exists out of relation to our 
faculties; for of body in this sense we have not, and 
cannot have, any knowledge. The nearest approxima- 
tion which we can make to a conception of body per se 
is that of body as it appears in relation to all our facul- 
ties ; and, consequently, the primary qualities can only 
be directly given as existing in our own organism, which 
is the only body of which we are immediately cognisant 
* Eeid's Works, p. 882. + Eeid's Works, notes D and D*. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 115 

in every act of external perception. The secundo- 
primary and the secondary qualities are not in this 
sense qualities of body per se, being given only in certain 
special modes of cognition ; the former as attributes of 
an extra-organic substance resisting our locomotive 
energy, the latter as affections of our organism in this or 
that particular state of sensation. The primary qualities 
are thus the essential constituents of our empirical notion 
of body, from whatever form of experience it may be 
derived ; while the others are attributes superadded to 
that notion, as manifested by body in certain special 
relations only. 

But though the primary qualities of body as such 
are immediately given only as existing in our own 
organism, it is obvious that they are apprehended as 
forming the essential attributes of all matter alike, 
organic or otherwise ; for the body which resists our 
locomotive energy can only do so as occupying a 
portion of space into which we attempt to penetrate, 
and thus as possessing the same primary qualities with 
the organism to which it is related. The second; 1 ry 
qualities, too, though immediately apprehended only 
as affections of our organism, are, in the later develop- 
ment of consciousness, necessarily associated with ex- 
terior objects. The nature of this association next 
claims our attention, as that which gives rise to the im- 
portant phenomena of accpiircd perception. 



116 METAPHYSICS. 



OF THE ACQUIEED PERCEPTIONS. 

The examination of the Acquired Perceptions should, 
in strict accuracy, be undertaken in connection with 
the representative, not with the presentative conscious- 
ness. They are not, properly speaking, given in the 
sensitive act to which they are supposed to belong, but 
inferred by the understanding, according to a law of 
association, from the presence of something else. But 
inasmuch as the inference is one which is never con- 
sciously performed ; as it takes place by a necessary 
law of our mental constitution at a period too early to 
leave any trace in the memory ; as, consequently, in 
the complex acts of our matured consciousness the 
inferred elements are not directly distinguishable from 
the data which suggest them ; and as the explanation 
of the former is intimately connected with the preceding 
remarks on the latter, it will be better to sacrifice the 
strictly logical arrangement, in order to present in a 
more connected view the entire series of phenomena 
usually referred to the evidence of the senses. 

It has been already observed that, in the exercise of 
our faculties in their mature state, no perception occurs 
pure and isolated, but is, in all cases, united with an act 
of judgment or inference. To ascertain by actual 
experience the relative proportions of these ingredients, 






PSYCHOLOGY. 117 

so as to separate the independent acts of the senses from 
the results of their education, it would be necessary to 
have an exact recollection of our first impressions as 
they existed before the formation of habits. Nay, even 
this, were it possible, would be hardly sufficient ; as it 
may be questioned whether the education of the senses 
does not in some respects precede even the first 
occasions of their exercise. From what has been said 
in treating of the locomotive faculty, it appears that the 
sense of sight, for example, can never be said to have 
existed in a wholly uneducated state ; inasmuch as 
certain obscure notions of an external world already 
exist, and have made their influence felt, before the eyes 
of the child have come in contact with the light, or its 
acts been exposed to the observation of others. When, 
in the absence of experience of the simple, we attempt 
to supply its place by analysis of the compound, it must 
be borne in mind that the results at which we arrive 
will represent a theoretical rather than an actual process, 
and that some of the conclusions elicited by the theory 
will be only approximately true in practice. It must 
not be supposed, for instance, that the several stages 
through which the sense of sight is represented as pass- 
ing, actually occur as distinct phenomena of vision 
during the unremembered days of infancy. When 
theory declares that the object which we really see is in 
the organ of sight, it does not follow that the infant has 



118 METAPHYSICS. 

ever actually seen it there. The approximate truth, 
that the perception of distance is of gradual acquisition, 
may be ascertained by positive observation ; but no 
observation can tell us whether the actual exercise of 
sight began with the first or with a later member of the 
series. The remark which we have before had occasion 
to make, that the distinctions of Psychology represent 
the elements of consciousness rather than separate acts, 
is equally applicable here. 

Of the acquired perceptions, those of vision are by 
far the most important ; so much so that it will be 
sufficient to notice a few of the principal of these, 
leaving the reader to apply our observations, mutatis 
mutandis, to the other senses. The principle which 
must guide him in making the application is that which 
we have more than once had occasion to repeat ; 
namely, that no sense, in its original state, informs us of 
anything more them certain states of our own organism. 
In addition to this, it will be necessary to bear in mind 
another principle of no less importance; namely, that 
all representation must he founded on a presentation ; in 
other words, that nothing can he inferred in connection 
ivith one phenomenon of consciousness which has not heen 
given in connection with another. The examination of 
this principle belongs to a later stage of our inquiry. 
For the present we must content ourselves with taking 
it for granted. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 119 

Among the acquired perceptions of the sense of 
sight, the most important are the following : — 1. The 
perception of an external field of vision distinct from the 
retina, and the consequent judgments concerning the 
distance and magnitude of objects in that field. 2. The 
perception of the unity of a visible object, which pre- 
sents a separate image to each retina. 3. The perception 
of the object as solid or extended in three dimensions of 
space, and of its figure or boundary in each direction. 
4. The perception of its position, which is the reverse of 
that of its image on the retina. A few remarks on each 
of these will, it is hoped, furnish sufficient information 
for the explanation of acquired perceptions in general. 

I. Field of vision. — The true or perceived field of 
vision is the surface of the retina itself ; and this may, 
in certain cases, be actually discerned as such. Thus, 
the sensation of darkness is the consciousness of the 
condition of the retina in a state of repose ; and in this 
there is no perception of any field of vision exterior to 
the retina itself. The apparent or inferred field of 
vision is a space of greater or less extent, exterior to the 
eye, on which the images of the retina are projected by 
an act of the mind. In the majority of cases, we 
appear to perceive this field immediately ; but many 
observations have been adduced to show that this 
apparent perception is not part of the original faculty of 
sight An infant appears at first to have no perception 



120 METAPHYSICS. 

by sight of the distance of objects, but stretches out its 
hands towards distant and near bodies alike. The youth 
who was couched by Cheselden saw at first all objects 
in one plane, and apparently touching the eye. It is true 
that the patient in this instance saw the objects as on 
not in the eye ; and this may, perhaps, be the case with 
the infant also ; but it must be remembered that the 
ideas of externality and distance are already partially 
acquired by the locomotive faculty before the sense of 
sight comes into exercise. From these approximate 
facts, joined to what we know of the theory of vision, we 
may conclude, with some probability, that a being desti- 
tute of the power of motion would, on first opening his 
eyes, discern nothing but the images existing on the 
surface of the retina. 

But, when the know]edge of an external world has 
been once given by the locomotive faculty, the education 
of the sense of vision follows rapidly and imperceptibly. 
A certain image on the retina accompanies the percep- 
tion of an object in contact with the hand. The object 
is pushed further off, and the size and outline of the 
image undergo a corresponding change. The hand is 
placed over the object, and its image takes the place of 
the other. It is placed over the eye, and the images 
vanish altogether. Certain sensations of sight are thus 
at first associated with certain perceptions of distance ; 
then suggest those perceptions when the latter are not 



PSYCHOLOGY. 121 

immediately present ; and finally, as the process be- 
comes more familiar, are substituted for them. Some- 
thing similar to this takes place more perceptibly in 
some of the associations of ideas which are formed at a 
later period. In many cases, where the association is 
frequent, the antecedent is gradually forgotten, and the 
attention wholly fixed on the consequent. There is no 
original connection between the meaning of a word and 
its sound, or between the sound and the written charac- 
ters by which it is represented to the eye ; yet the sight 
of certain black figures on a white ground suggests to 
the child, first the sound, and through the sound the 
meaning. At a later stage the intermediate links of 
the chain are forgotten ; the sound vanishes entirely ; 
the form of the letter is scarcely, if at all, noticed ; and 
the sight of the printed page plunges, us at once into 
communion with the thoughts of the writer. Yet the 
mere visual perception remains as it was, one and the 
same to the man who can read and to the man who 
cannot. All beyond this is acquired by habit ; and the 
process, when most familiar and most imperceptible, is 
in its successive steps precisely the same as in those 
early days when we painfully combined distinct letters 
into syllables, and distinct syllables into words, and 
distinct words into sentences. The principal difference 
which distinguishes this and similar operations from 
the acquired perceptions of sight is, that the assoeia- 



122 METAPHYSICS. 

tions are formed in the one case consciously, after the 
mind has acquired a power of reflecting on its own 
operations, and of acting in consequence of reflection ; 
in the other, unconsciously, by an instinctive law of our 
constitution. Hence the latter may be described as a 
natural association common to all men ; the former, as 
an artificial association peculiar to the educated. Yet 
our natural powers are not, as natural, necessarily born 
with us. It is natural for man to see distant objects ; 
in the same way as it is natural for him to walk up- 
right and to use his hands. Yet there was a time 
when he could not discern distances by the eye ; just 
as there was a time when he crawled on all fours, and 
employed his hand for no other purpose than that of 
sucking its extremities. 

The following remarks of Professor Muller are 
important, in illustration of the phenomenon in ques- 
tion : — " Several physiologists — as Tourtal, Yolkmann, 
and Bartels — suppose the interpretation of the sensa- 
tions of the retina, as objects forming part of the exte- 
rior world, to be a faculty of the sense of vision itself. 
But what, in the first place, constitutes the external 
world ? Since, in the first acts of vision, the image of 
the individual's own body cannot be distinguished from 
those of other bodies, the referring of the sensations of 
vision to something external can be nothing else than 
the discrimination between the sensations of vision and 






PSYCHOLOGY. 123 

the subject of them — between the sensations and the 
sentient self. It is by the operations of the judgment 
that the objects of vision are recognised as exterior to 
the body of the individual. . . . It is said that the 
new-born infant perceives from the first that the ob- 
jects of vision are external to its body and to its eye ; 
but the infant perceives neither its own eye nor its 
body in the form of sensations of vision, and only 
learns by experience which of the images which it sees 
is its own body. We can therefore only say, that the 
new-born infant distinguishes the sensations from the 
sentient self ; and in this sense only does it perceive the 
sensation as something external. In brutes, the co- 
operation of instinct renders this reaction of the senso- 
rium under the impression of external objects much 
less indefinite ; for the young animal soon applies itself 
to the nipple of the mother ; so that its sensorium must 
be the seat of an innate impulse to attain to the image, 
which it sees, and which is an object, or something 
external to the sentient self, by appropriate movements. 
Though the new-born infant be at first unable to dis- 
tinguish between the image of its own body and those 
of external objects, it will soon remark that certain 
images in the field of vision are constantly reappear- 
ing, and that these images move when its body is 
voluntarily moved. These are images of parts of it> 
own body. All the other images in the field of vision 



124 METAPHYSICS. 

either change quite independently of the body of the 
infant, or the changes which they undergo do not cor- 
respond with its voluntary movements. These are 
images of objects appertaining to the external world, 
which, now recognised as existing in a space external 
to the body of the individual, are henceforth continu- 
ally presenting themselves in this space, which, accord- 
ing to the conception of the mind, is subject to the 
operations of vision. Of the eye, as the organ of vision, 
the new-born infant knows nothing." * 

The field of vision being thus by association per- 
ceived as external to the eye, our judgment of the rela- 
tive distance and magnitude of objects within that field 
is determined by similar associations. That of distance 
is an inference chiefly drawn, in the first instance, from 
the degrees of distinctness in the colour and outline of 
the objects, aided, perhaps, in the case of near objects, 
by the muscular sensations accompanying the conver- 
gence of the optic axes.t That of magnitude may be 
considered as partly original, partly acquired. Original, 
in so far as there is a difference in the size of the ob- 
ject actually perceived (i.e. the image on the retina), 
dependent upon the visual angle made by the central 
rays of two pencils of light from the extreme points of 
a luminous body, intersecting after refraction within 

* Elements of Physiology, p. 1168. 
t Carpenter, Principles of Human Physiology, p. 922. 









PSYCHOLOGY. 125 

the eye ; acquired, inasmuch as the inferred magnitude 
of the external object is the result of a combination of 
the size of its image with other phenomena, chiefly with 
those which give rise to our estimate of its distance. 
This is, in substance, the theory of distance and magni- 
tude first proposed by Bishop Berkeley, — a theory 
which, while it has been amended and completed in 
some of its minor details by the discoveries of modern 
science, remains in its essential features unshaken. 

II. Single vision with two eyes. — The above remarks 
are also applicable in a great degree to the phenomenon 
of single vision with two eyes ; a phenomenon whicli 
many eminent physiologists have referred to a special 
provision in the structure of the visual apparatus* but 
which is sufficiently proved by the observations and 
experiments of Professor Wheatstone to be an inference 
from the mental combination of the two images actually 
seen. To this combination it is necessary that the two 
images should fall on portions of the two retinas which 
have been accustomed to act in concert ; and the prin- 
ciple on which it mainly depends is doubtless the 
association of a single perception of resistance with 
the double image of the corresponding visible pheno- 

kmena.t 
* See Miiller's Elements of Physiology, p. 1197. 
t See Dr. Baly's remarks in his translation of Miiller's Element! <>/ 
Physiology, p. 1205 ; and Carpenter's Principles of Humaii Phyeiology, 
p. 917. 



126 METAPHYSICS. 

III. Solidity and Figure. — The perceptions of soli- 
dity and figure are results of the same law of association. 
The former, as Professor Wheatstone's experiments 
show, is like the unity of the object, the effect of the 
combination of the two visible images, and depends, as 
far as sight is concerned, upon the different perspective 
exhibited by the projection of each. The phenomena of 
the stereoscope present a now familiar illustration of 
this ; two plane projections being, by means of this 
instrument, made to act upon the eye in the same man- 
ner that solid figures do in ordinary vision ; and the 
two being, by an act of the mind, combined into the 
appearance of one external solid body.* The percep- 
tion of resistance, however, has also some share in the 
origin of this association. Figure, like magnitude, is 
partly an original, partly an acquired perception. Plane 
figures, such as a square or a circle, can be depicted on 
the surface of the retina, and can thus be distinguished 
from each other by the original power of the sense of 
sight. Solid figures, such as a sphere or a cube, are 
discerned in a great measure by the simultaneous use 
of both eyes, though the accuracy of the discrimination 



* This explanation is of course inapplicable to the case of persons 
who have the sight of one eye only. Here, however, the same percep- 
tion of solidity will be produced, partly by the associations suggested by 
resistance, and partly by the different perspective of the projection, con- 
equent on changes in the position of the single eye. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 127 

is, no doubt, assisted by associations derived from touch 
assisted by motion.* 

IV. Erect vision. — The explanation of the erect posi- 
tion of external objects has been attempted in various 
ways, none of which, however, can be considered as 
quite satisfactory.! It seems to be a law of the mind, 
in projecting images beyond the retina, to follow in some 
degree the course of the rays, and thus to produce an 
inverted impression when the image is projected beyond 
the point where the rays intersect. But to investigate 

* Molyneux proposed to Locke the question whether a person born 
blind, who was able by touch to distinguish a cube from a sphere, would, 
on suddenly obtaining his sight, be able to distinguish them by the 
latter sense (see Locke, Essay, b. ii. chap. 9). Professor Miiller 
finds it " difficult to conceive wherefore these two philosophers answered 
the problem in the negative. " That figures, solid as well as plane, can 
be distinguished by sight alone, when the perception of an external field 
of vision has once been acquired, seems unquestionable ; but the real 
problem is to determine whether each perception of sight can be at once 
identified with the corresponding perception of touch. That this cannot 
be done has been recently shown experimentally in a case reported by 
JMr. Nunneley of Leeds. The patient in this case was actually in the 
circumstances supposed by Molyueux, capable of distinguishing a cube 
from a sphere by touch. On first exercising his sight he could perceive 
a difference in the shapes, but could not say which was the cnbe and 
which the sphere. This interesting case confirms, in many respects, 
the experiment of Gheselden. See Nunneley Chi the Orgam 
p. 32. 

t Sir David Brewster's theory of the line of visible direction is 
objected to on physiological grounds by Dr. Carpenter, Human i 
logy, p. 010. That proposed by Professor Miiller, and adopted by Dr. 
Carpenter, may be briefly stated thus. Up and down, right and left, 
are relative terms ; therefore the inversion of everything is equivalent to 



128 METAPHYSICS. 

this and similar points fully, it would be necessary to 
know the exact relations of rnind and body to each 
other in the act of sensation. This is impossible, as we 
cannot trace the action of the mind apart from that of 
the organism. The explanation of many of the pheno- 
mena of sensation probably depend on some inscrutable 
condition of consciousness, which no examination of the 
mere nervous organism is able to reveal to us. " There 
is," says Mr. Morell, " a perilous distance for the mate- 
rialist to travel between the retina and the living soul. 
The eye does not see of itself, neither, if the optic nerve 
be severed, can any visual perception reach the mind. 
How, then, we may ask, can the image on the retina 
travel along the nerve, and impress the brain with its 
own form and hue ? The moment we get beyond the 
mere mechanism of the case, our power of tracing the 
image is lost, and we can only detect at the other, or 
spiritual end of the process, a mental phenomenon, 
differing as widely as possible from the mere material 
substance without." * 

The acquired perceptions of the other senses may be 

the inversion of nothing. This explanation, however, does not tell ns 
why the inversion takes place, but only accounts for the fact of our not 
noticing it. The fact still remains unexplained, that the external object 
and the image on the retina are, to the eye of a stranger, in a position 
the reverse of each other. Query — Are they likewise so in different stages 
of the vision of the person himself '? This we have as yet no means of 
determining. 

* Elements of Psychology, p. 131. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 129 

explained on the same principles. Such, for instance, 
are the judgments which we form of the direction and 
distance of an object by the hearing or the smell ; these 
two senses having, like that of sight, both an original 
and an acquired field for their exercise. Cognate to 
the subject of acquired Perceptions is that of acquired 
Sensations. The feelings of pleasure and pain, which 
an object imparts through the senses, may be as much 
the result of practice and association as the information 
which we gain by the same means concerning its nature. 
Instances of this may be found in the artificial tastes 
which we gain by the constant use of objects which at 
first were considered as indifferent or disagreeable ; and, 
again, in the strong feelings of dislike with which we 
often regard various sensations, solely in consequence of 
some early association. And hence it will often be the 
case that the different degrees of pleasure which the 
several senses are capable of affording to an educated 
man, will by no means correspond to those which they 
materially impart as vehicles of mere animal enjoyment. 
Thus the senses of sight and hearing, which are less 
intense than the other senses in the merely nervous 
affections which they are calculated to excite, are, not- 
withstanding, the vehicles of a mixed enjoyment (partly 
sensitive, partly intellectual) of a far higher order. But 
the pleasure which we enjoy from the sight of beautiful 
scenery, or from the bearing of music, is something 

K 



130 METAPHYSICS. 

very different from the natural sensation, or affection of 
the nervous organism. The natural sensation is limited 
to that amount of enjoyment of which the sense is sus- 
ceptible at the moment of its exercise. When our eyes 
are gratified by a variety of visible objects, or our ears 
by a succession of sounds, the memory, and not the 
sensation, plays the principal part. We see the various 
objects, we hear the various sounds, in succession; 
though by an act of thought we necessarily combine 
them into a single whole. But the discernment of rela- 
tions is in no case a work of sense ; and beauty and 
deformity, harmony and discord, are almost entirely 
the result of relations. To estimate the merely sensual 
pleasure imparted by sight and hearing, we must sup- 
pose the eye to be limited to a succession of detached 
colours, and the ear to a succession of isolated sounds, 
with no consciousness of any relation between them, 
and no power of comparing the past with the present. 
This distinction between original and acquired sensa- 
tions has been perhaps too much neglected in the vari- 
ous attempts that have been made to construct an exact 
philosophy of taste. 

OF ATTENTION. 

That sensation, as before observed, is neither a purely 
bodily nor a purely mental affection — that it belongs 



PSYCHOLOGY. 131 

neither to the nervous organism alone, nor yet exclu- 
sively to the active self by which that organism is 
animated, but to that mysterious union of both, whose 
elements and laws philosophy has ever failed, and pro- 
bably ever will fail, to penetrate — appears conspicuously 
when we come to examine two states of consciousness 
which appear to form the connecting links between the 
external and the internal affections, between the passive 
and the active elements of our nature, partaking 
of both, and identical with neither. These two are 
Attention and Imagination. Attention, in particular, 
partakes of this twofold character in a remarkable 
degree. To a hasty inspection it appears as if the oper- 
ation of this faculty were at once the antecedent and 
the consequent of the sensible impression, as if the mind 
were at the same time active and passive in its produc- 
tion. It appears certain, on the one hand, that, in order 
to arouse the attention to any sensible phenomenon, that 
phenomenon must first be presented to consciousness ; 
while, on the other hand, it has been argued, with some 
plausibility, that unless the attention be previously 
aroused, consciousness has no intimation of the exist- 
ence of the phenomenon at all. All the physical con- 
ditions of sensation may exist in full perfection, without 
any corresponding impression being produced upon the 
mind. " When two persons," says Eeid, *' are engaged 
in interesting discourse, the clock strikes within their 



132 METAPHYSICS. 

hearing, to which they give no attention. What is the 
consequence ? The next minute they know not whether 
the clock struck or not. Yet their ears were not shut. 
The usual impression was made upon the organ of 
hearing, and upon the auditory nerve and brain ; but, 
from inattention, the sound either was not perceived, or 
passed in the twinkling of an eye, without leaving the 
least vestige in the memory/'* Of the two alternatives 
here offered to our choice, the latter is adopted by Dr. 
Eeid's successor as the more accurate explanation of the 
phenomenon. That attention is not necessary to the 
existence of a sensation in the consciousness seems at 
first sight manifest, both a priori, because a phenomenon 
must exist before the attention can be aroused to 
observe it, and a posteriori, from the very narrow limits 
within which experience testifies that our power over 
our own sensations is confined. When the mind is 
unoccupied, the slightest and most familiar sounds will 
make themselves heard as a matter of course. It is 
not necessary that the attention should be previously 
directed towards the object from which the sound pro- 
ceeds ; it is sufficient that it be not engaged with any 
other object. A louder or more unusual sound forces 
itself on the consciousness, however much the attention 
may be engaged elsewhere. The striking of a clock 
may be unheard during an interesting discourse ; but 

* Active Powers, Essay ii. chap. 3. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 133 

the report of a gun, or any unwonted noise, will be 
heard in spite of it. These and other considerations 
may be urged in favour of the hypothesis so ably main- 
tained by Dugald Stewart, — namely, that we are in all 
cases conscious of the sensation, but are not always able 
to recollect that we have been conscious. " The true 
state of the fact," says that distinguished philosopher, 
■ I apprehend, is, that the mind may think and will, 
without attending to its thoughts and volitions, so as to 
be able afterwards to recollect them. Nor is this merely 
verbal criticism ; for there is an important difference 
between consciousness and attention, which it is very 
necessary to keep in view, in order to think upon this 
subject with any degree of precision. The one is an 
involuntary state of mind ; the other is a voluntary 
act : the one has no immediate connection with the 
memory ; but the other is so essentially subservient to 
it, that without some degree of it, the ideas and percep- 
tions which pass through the mind seem to leave no 
trace behind them. "When two persons are speaking to 
us at once, we can attend to either of them at pleasure 
without being much disturbed by the other. If we 
attempt to listen to both we can understand neither. 
The fact seems to be, that when we attend constantly to 
one of the speakers, the words spoken by the other 
make no impression on the memory, in consequence of 



134 METAPHYSICS. 

they had not been uttered. This power, however, of the 
mind to attend to either speaker at pleasure, supposes 
that it is at one and the same time conscious of the 
sensations which both produce. Another well-known 
fact may be of use in illustrating the same distinction. 
A person who accidentally loses his sight never fails to 
improve gradually in the sensibility of his touch. Now 
there are only two ways of explaining this. The one 
is, that in consequence of the loss of the one sense, 
some change takes place in the physical constitution of 
the body, so as to improve a different organ of percep- 
tion. The other, that the mind gradually acquires a 
power of attending to and remembering those slighter 
sensations of which it was formerly conscious, but 
which, from our habits of inattention, made no impres- 
sion whatever on the memory. No one, surely, can 
hesitate for a moment in pronouncing which of these 
two suppositions is the more philosophical."* 

But this ingenious reasoning is not quite so con- 
clusive as at first sight it appears to be. It proves 
clearly that the attention cannot be directed to an object 
in contact with an organ of sense unless something 
intervenes to arouse it ; but it assumes without proof 
that this something must itself be a phenomenon of 
consciousness. The question remains, Is the pheno- 
menon of which we become fully conscious by attention 

* Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, part ii. chap. 2. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 135 

the same phenomenon that it was before we attended to 
it? or has atteutiou itself added an element which 
brings it within the sphere of consciousness ? It seems 
at first sight a paradox to maintain that our conscious- 
ness can be stimulated by anything of which we are not 
conscious. Yet this apparent paradox is a fact which 
in some degree takes place at every moment of our 
lives. "When we look at the smallest visible point of 
light, this is obviously compounded of parts so small as 
to be invisible ; yet each of these contributes its share 
to the sum total of consciousness. When we see a dis- 
tant forest, the indistinct impression of green is made 
up of the greenness of every individual leaf, not one of 
which could be singly discerned. The theory of latent 
modifications of mind, or, as they are called by Leib- 
nitz, obscure representations, which is well calculated to 
explain many of the most curious phenomena of con- 
sciousness, has been almost entirely neglected by the 
philosophers of this country ; yet it is one which, 
though in most of its details belonging to physiology 
rather than to psychology, must be assumed by the 
latter science as the basis of many of its researches. In 
the recently-published Lectures on Mctajrfiysics of Sir 
AY. Hamilton, this deficiency has been in a great degree 
supplied ; and the English student of philosophy has 
now the means of seeing this question treated with 



136 METAPHYSICS. 

But whether, in the widest sense of the term con- 
sciousness, it can or cannot be correctly described as prior 
to and independent of the act of attention, yet in the 
narrower and more accurate sense, in which alone it can 
be the object of scientific analysis, attention becomes a 
necessary condition of its existence, or rather is iden- 
tical with consciousness itself. Every phenomenon of 
consciousness proper, as before observed, must possess 
in some degree the attributes of clearness and distinct- 
ness, without which it can leave no trace in the memory, 
and cannot be compared with other phenomena of the 
same class. But to a clear or distinct consciousness it 
is necessary that an act of reflection should accompany 
the intuition ; and to the act of reflection it is neces- 
sary that the phenomenon in question should have been 
observed with some degree of attention. The act of 
attention is therefore a necessary condition, possibly of 
the existence of a sensation in consciousness, but cer- 
tainly of its recognition as such ; and, in strict language, 
it would not be inaccurate to define Attention as Con- 
sciousness in operation relatively to a definite object. 
This intimate union of the active with the passive 
functions of the human mind ; this presence in every 
complete act of consciousness of a voluntary and per- 
sonal factor — a permanent self in the midst of transitory 
modes, — exhibits man as in some degree the master of 
his own consciousness, and the author of the phenomena 



PSYCHOLOGY. 137 

which it reveals to him. It is the exaggeration or 
exclusive consideration of this element which is the 
source of most of the extravagances of idealist metaphy- 
sics, as its neglect or suppression has given rise to most 
of the opposite extravagances of sensationalism. 

OF IMAGINATION, MEMORY, AND HOPE. 

In the art of attention the mind selects certain pro- 
minent features of an object of intuition, which thus 
become fixed in the memory, and capable of reproduc- 
tion when the object is no longer present. The repro- 
ductive Imagination is thus the sequel of attention, 
forming the second link in the chain of connection 
between the intuitive and the reflective consciousness.* 
Hence, in a strictly methodical arrangement, the treat- 
ment of attention and imagination should be postponed 
till after the complete examination of the phenomena of 
intuition. But the prominence which, in the majority of 
treatises on the subject, has been given to the sensible 
relations of these two cognate acts, may furnish both an 
excuse for the consideration of them in the present 
place, and an opportunity of pointing out some of the 
chief defects which may be noticed in the ordinary 
treatment of them. " Imagination," says Dr. Reid, 
" when it is distinguished from conception, seems to me 

* See Morell, Elements of Psycltology, p. 169. 



138 METAPHYSICS. 

to signify one species of conception — to wit, the concep- 
tion of visible objects."* In this he follows the language 
of Descartes, — "Iniaginari nihil aliud est quam rei 
corporese figuram seu imaginem contemplari."t Mr. 
Stewart, though differing in his language, virtually limits 
the office of the same faculty to the reproduction of 
sensible impressions, though he does not, like the two 
authors last cited, confine it to the impressions of sight. 
Under the name of conception, he defines it as "that 
power of the mind which enables it to form a notion of 
an absent object of perception, or of a sensation which it 
has formerly felt." J Of the proper sense of the term 
conception we shall have occasion to speak hereafter. 
For the present, it will be sufficient to observe that 
Imagination, in the proper psychological sense of the 
term, should not be confined to the reproduction of the 
phenomena connected with the bodily senses. It should 
rather be defined as the consciousness of an image in 
the mind, resembling and representing an object of pos- 
sible intuition. Not the objects of sense alone, but the 
presentations of intuition, external or internal, — desires, 

* Intellectual Powers, Essay iv. chap. 1. 

+ Meditatio Secunda. The office of imagination in relation to two 
other senses is accurately described in the lines of Shelley — 
"Music, when soft voices die, 
Vibrates in the memory ; 
Odours, when sweet violets sicken, 
Live within the sense they quicken." 
J Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, part i. chap. 3. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 139 

affections, volitions, thoughts, as well as sounds, or 
colours, or figures, — everything, in short, that can be 
experienced in consciousness as an individual thing, act, 
or state of mind, may remain as an image in the 
memory, or be reproduced in the mind at a future 
period. Or the detached portions of objects once per- 
ceived may be combined by the imagination in a manner 
in which they have never been presented in any actual 
experience. Thus, when the upper parts of a man and 
the lower parts of a horse have been perceived by the 
sense in separate objects, the image of a centaur may be 
formed as readily as that of a horse or a man. It is to 
this last " power of modifying our conceptions, by com- 
bining the parts of different ones together, so as to form 
new wholes of our own creation," that Mr. Stewart 
would confine the term imagination. The distinction 
really lies not so much in the image obtained as in the 
manner of obtaining it ; and, though worthy of notice 
on many accounts, should, I think, be expressed in dif- 
ferent language. 

Imagination is of two kinds, which, following the 
plan of classifying the phenomena of mind by the 
leading characteristics of each, may be distinguished as 
belonging to the intuitive and the reflective conscious- 
ness respectively. The first, in which the mind is 
comparatively passive, consists in the continuance, in a 
weaker form, of a sensible or otherwise intuitive irapres- 



140 METAPHYSICS. 

sion, when the object which gave rise to it is no longer 
present * This is the imagination which is described 
by Aristotle as a hind of weak sensation, f and as sensi- 
tive imagination.^ When conpled with a consciousness 
of the past existence of the impression which it repre- 
sents, it forms the memory, as distinguished from the 
reminiscence of Aristotle.§ The other kind of imagin- 
ation is more properly an act of thought J | and consists 
in constructing in the mind an individual image 
(whether actually resembling a former impression or 
not) in accordance with the attributes contained in a 
given general notion. In this' instance, imagination 
coincides with a faculty to be hereafter described, — con- 
ception. It is, in fact, individualising the contents of a 

* Arist. Anal. Post. ii. 19. 'Evodo-rjs 5' aladrjaecos tois p.ev tQ>v {ipuv 
eyyiverai fiovr] alo~6rip.aT05, reus 5' ovk iyyiverai. "Oaois fiei> odv jxt) ey- 
yiverat., ?) o\ws lq irepl & jxt) eyyiverai, ovk £<jti toutois yvQacs ££u rod 
aladdveadai ' ev oh 5\ 'ivecm \jlt)\ aladavop.e'vois %x eLV % TL & T V faXV- 
The negative inserted by Trendelenburg appears indispensable to the 
sense. 

fMet. 1. 11. 

$ De Anima, iii. 11. 'H pev odv alo-d-qriKT} (pavrao-la Kal iv rots #\\ois 
fyois virdpx^h V 8e (3ov\evTiKr) ev rots XoyiaTiKois. 

§ Aristotle, De Memoria, c. i. « TLvos p.ev odv tG>v tt)s tyvxqs earlv -f] 
fjLvrjfjLrj ; (pavepbv, on Kal odirep t\ (pavraaia ' Kal '4o~tI p.vt]p,ovevrd /ca0' airrct, 
p.ev oaa earl (pavraard. 

|| De Memoria, c. ii. 25. Aia<pepei de rod p,vr)p,ovedeiv to dvap.ip.vqo~Keo~- 
6ai, oi pidvov Kara rbv X9 0V0V i <*^ 0Tl T °v ^ v pt-vrjp.ove6eiv Kal tQv dWcov 
£oi<j)v p,erix ei iroWd, rod 5' avapLip-vrjo-Keo-dai ovdev, <bs eiireiv, r&v yvcopi- 
frpievuv tywv tt\t]v dvdpunros. Aitiov 5" 6'ri to dvapup-vrjo-Keadal eo~Tiv olov 
avWoyiap-ds ti$. 



PSYCHOLOGY. HI 

concept or general notion, so as to depict them (which 
in their general form is impossible) to the intuitive 
consciousness. This kind of imagination may be simpler 
or more complex, according as the image is constructed 
immediately, from the data furnished by the given 
notion, or mediately, from a train of associations which 
that notion suggests. It includes under it as a species 
the deliberative imagination of Aristotle ; and, when 
coupled with the conscious effort to recall a past impres- 
sion, corresponds in some degree to the reminiscence of 
the same philosopher.* 

Imagination, Memory, and Hope are psychologically 
one and the same faculty, f In Imagination, the pre- 
sence of the image is necessarily accompanied by a 
conviction of the possible existence of the corresponding 
object in an intuition. Memory is the presence of 
the same image, accompanied by a conviction of the 
fact, that the object represented has actually existed in 

* By reminiscence, Aristotle means the process of endeavouring to 
reproduce something formerly on the memory, indirect^, by means of 
associated ideas. Memory proper comes in at the conclusion of the pro- 
cess, though it may also exist without it. (See l)c Memoria, ii. 4.) In 
this point of view, it is obvious that memory is the result of a process of 
thought, and therefore should not have been identified with thai retention 
or remembrance which in the same chapter Lb described as common to 
men and brutes. It would be more accurate to distinguish between 
intuitive and reJlecttveTem.embTa.nee, according as it La performed with- 
out or with the intervention of a concept ; and of tie' latter tin- Aristo- 
telian dud/xvTjais is a special form. 

+ See Sir Y\\ Hamilton, Discussions, p. ."J. 



142 METAPHYSICS. 

a past intuition. Hope, in like manner, is the presence 
of the same image, together with an anticipation, more 
or less vivid, of the actual existence of the object in a 
future intuition. Imagination, memory, and hope are 
thus (whether formed by a reflective process or not) 
in their actual results partly presentative, partly repre- 
sentative. They are presentative of the image, which 
has its own distinct existence in consciousness, irrespec- 
tively of its relation to the object which it is supposed 
to represent. They are representative of the object, 
which that image resembles, and which, either in its 
present form or in its several elements, must have been 
presented in a past act of intuition. Thus there is com- 
bined an immediate consciousness of the present with 
a mediate consciousness of the past. An immediate 
or presentative consciousness of the past or the future, 
as such, is impossible. 

Imagination, being representative of an intuition, is, 
like intuition, only possible on the condition that its 
immediate object should be an individual If we try to 
form in our minds the image of a triangle, it must be 
of some individual figure,— equilateral, isosceles, or 
scalene. It is impossible that it should, at the same 
time, be all of these, or none. It may bear more or less 
resemblance to the object which it represents ; but it 
can attain to resemblance at all only by being, like the 
object itself, individual. I may recall to mind, with 



PSYCHOLOGY. 143 

more or less vividness, the features of an absent friend, 
as I may paint his portrait with more or less accuracy ; 
but the likeness in neither case ceases to be the indi- 
vidual representation of an indivdiual man. On the 
other hand, my notion of a man in general can attain 
to universality only by surrendering resemblance ; it 
becomes the indifferent representative of all mankind, 
only because it has no special likeness to any one in 
particular. This distinction must be carefully borne in 
mind in comparing imagination with the cognate pro- 
cess of conception. 

OF INTERNAL INTUITION IN GENERAL. 

Locke, as is well known, referred the origin of onr 
ideas to two sources — sensation, by which we acquire 
our knowledge of external objects ; and reflection, by 
which we become acquainted with the internal opera- 
tions of our own minds. The latter term is unfor- 
tunately chosen, as it naturally suggests the notion of a 
turning lack of the mind upon an object previously 
existing ; and thus represents the phenomena of con- 
sciousness as distinct from the act of reflecting upon 
them. Understood in this sense, reflection can have no 
other objects than the phenomena of sensation in some 
one of its modes; for sensation and reflection are the 
only recognised sources of knowledge ; and if reflection 



144 METAPHYSICS. 

implies a previously existing operation of mind, that 
operation can be none other than sensation. Inter- 
preting Locke in this sense, Condillac and his followers 
were only carrying out the doctrine to its legitimate 
consequences when they maintained that sensation was 
the only original source of ideas, and furnished the 
whole material of our knowledge. But though the 
language of Locke is both unfortunate in its choice of 
terms and vacillating in the use of them, the general 
tenor of his philosophy demands a different interpreta- 
tion of the term reflection, as synonymous with internal 
consciousness ; that is to say, as a knowledge of the 
presence of certain inward phenomena of mind, which 
exist only as they are known, and are known only as 
they exist. Eenection is thus an original and inde- 
pendent source of ideas not distinct from, but identical 
with, the acts that are its objects. It is, in fact, the 
consciousness of those states of the mind by which it is 
placed in relation to itself, as Sensation is the conscious- 
ness of those states of the mind by which it is placed in 
relation to the material world. Both sensation and 
reflection thus denote original states of consciousness, 
which exist only in so far as we are conscious of them, 
lor example, i" see, and I am conscious that I see. These 
two assertions, logically distinct, are really one and 
inseparable. Sight is a state of consciousness ; and I 
see only in so far as I am conscious of seeing. Here, 



PSYCHOLOGY. H> 

then, is one source of ideas, — the consciousness of cer- 
tain affections of our bodily senses in relation to exter- 
nal objects. Whatever comes from this source is classed 
by Locke under the general head of ideas of sensation. 
But again ; I am angry, and I am conscious that I am 
angry ; I fear, and I am conscious that 1 fear ; I will, 
and I am conscious that I will. Here, too, are acts 
which exist only in so far as we are conscious of them, 
and which point to another and a distinct source of 
ideas, — the consciousness, that is to say, of internal 
phenomena taking place in the mind itself. Whatever 
comes from this source is classed by Locke under the 
general head of ideas of reflection. It is in this sense 
that he describes reflection as a source of ideas which 
every man has wholly in himself, and which, " though 
it be not sense, as having nothing to do with external 
objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly enough 
be called internal sense!'* And thus, also, in another 
passage, he says, u I cannot but confess that external 
and internal sensation are the only passages that I can 
find of knowledge to the understanding/' t We may 
thus, retaining the substance of Locke's teaching, though 
slightly altering his language, divide the presentative 
consciousness into two kinds : — 1. External Intuition, 
which embraces the various phenomena of sensation 
and perception; together with that knowledge of the 

* Essay, b. ii. chap. i. sec. 4. t Essay, b. ii. chap. xi. sec. 17. 

L 



146 METAPHYSICS. 

attributes of matter which is obtained through the loco- 
motive faculty ; and 2. Internal Intuition, which 
includes all those modes of consciousness in which we 
become immediately cognisant of the various states of 
our own mind, as well as the concomitant consciousness 
of our own personality as the one permanent subject of 
these successive states. The phenomena of external 
intuition have been described in the preceding pages. 
We have next to consider those of internal intuition ; 
and here it will be most convenient to begin with the 
variable element, as exhibited in the several mental 
states of which we are successively conscious. The 
Form of this consciousness, as has been already observed, 
is time. The phenomena which we are about to describe 
constitute the Matter. 

OF THE CLASSIFICATION OF INTERNAL INTUITIONS. 

Internal Intuition, in the widest sense of the term, 
includes among its modes the whole of the phenomena 
of consciousness ; for consciousness in general denotes 
a state of the mind ; and all states of the mind are 
objects of internal intuition. In this extended signifi- 
cation, the phenomena of sensation and those of thought 
are both included under this head; for sensation, 
though in respect of its object it is external to the 
conscious mind, is in itself an affection of which that 
mind is intuitively conscious ; and thought, in like 



PSYCHOLOGY. U7 

manner, though in respect of its object it is mediate 
and representative, is in itself an individual act of 
which we are immediately and presentatively conscious. 
Thus, for example, colour, the object of sight, is an 
affection of the nervous organism, and therefore external 
to the immaterial self, the subject of consciousness ; 
but sight, as a species of sensation, is a state of the 
personal consciousness, and, as such, internal. So, 
again, when I think of any material object, such as a 
tree or a stone, the object of which I think is external 
to the mind, and represented by the notion which I 
form of it ; but the act of thinking about it is an indi- 
vidual affection of the conscious self, having its own 
definite position in time, and thereby numerically dis- 
tinguished from every other affection, however similar. 
I may think of the same tree on twenty successive occa- 
sions ; but my several thoughts, however identical in 
their objects, are nevertheless twenty successive, dis- 
tinct, and individual states of my own mind, and, as 
such, belong to the class of internal intuitions. But in 
the practical treatment of the subject it is not necessary 
to take into consideration either of the above classes t)f 
mental phenomena ; for the distinction between an act 
of consciousness and. its object, though logically valid, 
has psychologically no existence. In no actual opera- 
tion of consciousness can the act be separated from the 
object, or the object from the act, l>y no mental 



148 METAPHYSICS. 

abstraction can either of these correlatives be conceived 
apart from the other, — though they are conceived 
together, not as identical, but as related and logically 
distinguishable. A perception cannot be conceived 
except as the perception of some object ; an object of 
perception cannot be conceived except as in relation to 
a perceiving mind. In treating, therefore, of the phe- 
nomena of sensitive perception in relation to their 
external objects, we have at the same time sufficiently 
exhibited their internal character as acts of mind. A 
similar remark may be made with respect to the opera- 
tions of thought. These will be examined hereafter in 
relation to the objects which they represent, and to their 
manner of representing them ; and this examination 
will, at the same time, necessarily include their presen- 
tative aspect as individual phenomena of consciousness. 
The perceptive and discursive faculties, which are thus 
excluded from our present consideration, embrace all 
those operations of consciousness which are usually 
referred to the head of cognitive or intellectual powers. 
There will still remain for consideration the various 
phenomena which in the same division are classified, 
not very accurately, as belonging to the appetitive or 
active powers ; * and which may, perhaps, be more 

Of this classification Sir "W". Hamilton observes : — " The division 
of the powers into those of the understanding and those of the will is 
very objectionable. It is taken from the peripatetic distinction of these 
into gnostic or cognitive, and orectic or appetent; but the original 



PSYCHOLOGY. 149 

exactly comprised under the three appellations of — 1. 
Emotions or Passions ; 2. Moral Judgments; 3. Volitions.* 

division is far preferable to the borrowed ; for, in the first place, the 
term understanding usually and properly denotes only a part— the 
higher part — of the cognitive faculties, and is thus exclusive of sense, 
imagination, memory, etc., which it is now intended to include. In the 
second place, the term will is also usually and properly limited to our 
higher appetencies, or rational determinations, as opposed to our lower 
appetencies, or irrational desires, which last, however, it is here 
employed to comprehend. In the third place, both the original and 
borrowed divisions are improper, inasmuch as they either exclude or 
improperly include a third great class of mental phenomena — the phe- 
nomena oi feeling." The distribution of our powers into speculative 
and active is also very objectionable. Independently of the objection 
common to it with that into the powers of the understanding and the 
powers of the will — that the feelings are excluded or improperly included 
— it is liable to objections peculiar to itself. In the first place, specula- 
tion or theory is a certain kind or certain application of knowledge ; 
therefore speculation is not a proper term by which to denote the cogni- 
tive operations in general. In the second place, speculation and know- 
ledge are not opposed to action, but to practice or doing, or, as it is best 
expressed in German, das Handeln. Speculative powers ought not, 
therefore, to have been opposed to active. In the third place, the dis- 
tinction of active powers is in itself vicious, because it does not dis- 
tinguish or distinguishes wrongly. Active is opposed to inactive ; 
but it is not here intended to be said that the cognitive powers are 
inactive, but merely that the action of the powers of appetency is differ- 
ent in kind from the action of the powers of knowledge. The term 
active does not, therefore, express what was meant, or rather does 
express what was not meant. It is to be observed, however, that 
the English language is very deficient in terms requisite to denote 
the distinction in question " (Reid's Works, p. 511). A somewhat 
similar criticism has been made by Brown, Lecture xvi., who uses the 
term emotions to denote the internal intuitions in general. For the 
classification unproved by Sir "NV. Hamilton himself, sec the next note. 
* Sir W. Hamilton, in the advertisement to the second volume of 



150 METAPHYSICS. 

It is difficult to fix upon any positive mark which shall 
express the distinctive characteristic of this group of 
mental phenomena, viewed as constituting a single 
class ; though they may, perhaps, be sufficiently dis- 
tinguished from other states of mind by the negative 
criterion of attributes which they do not possess. The 
internal intuitions, as a class, may, in this way, be de- 
scribed as comprehending all those affections of mind 
which are neither directly caused by conditions of the 
nervous organism, nor representative of an object dis- 
tinct from themselves. The first criterion will distin- 
guish them from the sensitive affections ; the second, 
from the intellectual powers properly so called. An 
instance will perhaps explain the distinction more 
clearly than a definition. A man may be affected with 
fear at the sight of a lion. The emotion of fear may in 

Stewart's Works, observes that, "if we take the mental to the exclu- 
sion of material phenomena, that is, the phenomena manifested through 
the medium of self-consciousness or reflection, they naturally divide 
themselves into three categories or primary genera : — the phenomena of 
knowledge or cognition, — the phenomena of feeling, or of pleasure and 
pain, — and the phenomena of conation, or of will and desire." This 
division, which had previously been given by Kant in his KritiTc der 
UrtheilsJcraft, though made on a somewhat different principle, coincides 
to a great extent with that given in the text. The phenomena of know- 
ledge will include the external intuitions already treated of, together 
with the moral judgments and the operations of thought proper. The 
phenomena of feeling answer to the class of emotions, and those of cona- 
tion in some degree to that of volitions. But in the present treatise the 
desires are classed with the feelings, and not, as in the above-mentioned 
arrangement, with the will. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 151 

one sense be said to be caused by an affection of the 
optic nerve — the sight, and to have an object distinct 
from itself — the lion ; but it is neither the immediate 
and necessary consequence of the one, nor is it represen- 
tative of the other. It is quite possible for the man 
to see the lion without fearing him ; and it is quite 
possible that he should fear him if he suspected that he 
was concealed near him, without any sensible intima- 
tion of his presence. And though the lion is the ulti- 
mate object of the mental affection, both when we think 
of him and when we are afraid of him, yet he is not 
represented in the mind by our fear as he is by our 
thought. An emotion, or other internal intuition, may 
accompany an act either of perception or of thought, 
though it is perfectly distinguishable from the one and 
the other. The pleasure which we experience at the 
sight of a beautiful prospect, and the desire which we 
have to see it, are both distinct from the sight itself, — 
just as the liking for mathematical studies, and the gra- 
tification arising from the solution of a problem, are 
distinct from the demonstrative process itself. 



OF THE PASSIONS OR EMOTIONS. 

Perhaps the nearest approach to a positive definition 
of the Passions or Emotions may be found in the lan- 
guage of Aristotle, who describes them as those states of 



152 METAPHYSICS. 

mind which are accompanied by 'pleasure or pain; 
but the definition requires some explanation before it 
can be accepted as satisfactory. A toothache is accom- 
panied by pain ; but a toothache is not an emotion. 
The pursuit and acquisition of knowledge is a source 
of pleasure ; but neither the pursuit nor the acquisition 
can be classed among the emotions. But it is neces- 
sary to distinguish between the bodily sensation or the 
mental energy, considered in itself, and the feeling of 
liking or disliking by which it is accompanied. The 
bodily sensation is not pleasant or painful per se, but 
may be the one or the other, according to the degree 
in which it exists. The sensation of heat, for example, 
up to a certain point, is the pleasant feeling of warmth ; 
beyond that point it is the painful feeling of burning. 
The sensation of touch may be pleasant or painful or 
indifferent, according to the nature of the body with 
which we are in contact, or the degree of resistance 
which it offers. Light, within certain limits, is plea- 
sant to the eye ; increased beyond those limits, it is 
dazzling and painful. The sensation itself is in no case 
an emotion : the feeling of liking or disliking, which 
accompanies it is so. The essence of the bodily sen- 
sation consists in its being a nervous affection of a 
particular kind. The accident, or emotion, which in 

* Eth. Nic. ii. 5. Aiy(a 5£ irdOrj fxh i-mOvfiiav, opyrjv, <p6(3op, Opdaos, 
<}>96vop, x a P^ v i ^CKlav^ fuaos, irbdov, £rj\op, ZXeov, 6'\ws oh Herat. ydovT) t) 
Xvirrj. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 153 

certain cases accompanies it, is, that that particular 
affection is agreeable or disagreeable. The same' may 
be said of the mental energies likewise. The desire of 
knowledge, and the pleasure which it imparts, are emo- 
tions : the act of pursuit and the state of possession 
are not so. It is perfectly conceivable that men might 
be so constituted as to seek after knowledge, from a 
rational conviction that it is their duty to do so, 
without deriving the slightest gratification from the 
pursuit or the acquisition ; just as they might take food, 
from a conviction of the duty of preserving life, without 
being actuated either directly by the appetite of hunger, 
or indirectly by the love of life. Under this expla- 
nation, we may, with tolerable accuracy, define the 
emotions or passions as those states of mind which con- 
sist in the consciousness of being affected agreeably or 
disagreeably ; and consistently with this point of view, 
an eminent modern philosopher has observed that there 
are, strictly speaking, but two passions, — the one aris- 
ing from the consciousness of pleasure, manifesting 
itself in the successive stages of joy, love, and desire, 
the other arising from the consciousness of pain, and 
exhibiting the successive forms of grief, hate, and aver- 
sion* The various subdivisions of these two classes are, 
properly, not so much distinctions in the nature of 

* JoufTroy, Melanges Philosophiqv.es, p. 269. Cf. Damiron, Psycho- 
logic, vol. i. p. 247. 



154 METAPHYSICS. 

the emotion itself, as in that of the objects upon which 
it is exercised. 

Hitherto we have used the words passion and emotion 
as synonymous. The above remarks will suggest, in 
stricter language, a distinction between them, which, 
though by no means accurately observed either in philo- 
sophical writings or in popular use, is yet in many cases 
perfectly intimated by both. To distinguish, indeed, 
between these terms, in strict accordance either with 
philosophical or general usage, is out of the question ; 
for scarcely any two writers or speakers are in all 
respects consistent with each other. Sometimes emo- 
tion is a species of passion ; sometimes passion is a 
species of emotion ; sometimes the two terms are used 
as exactly synonymous ; and at others the word passion 
is used to designate a violent degree of emotion. A 
more serviceable, and therefore a better, distinction 
than any of these may, we think, be furnished by the 
characteristics of the phenomena themselves, — a distinc- 
tion which, though not warranted by the etymology of 
the two words, yet appears to express with tolerable 
accuracy the difference imperfectly intimated in their 
popular use. Our internal as well as our external 
intuitions have both a subjective and an objective 
phase, inseparable from each other, but logically dis- 
tinguishable. This distinction, which in the case of 
our external intuitions is expressed by the terms sensa- 



PSYCHOLOGY. 155 

Hon and 'perception, may be marked in its internal 
aspect by the corresponding usage of emotion and 
passion. The mental phenomena of this class are com- 
posed of two principal ingredients, — a consciousness of 
being affected agreeably or disagreeably by a certain 
object, and a desire to obtain or avoid, to advance or 
impede, the object thus affecting us. This is equally 
the case, whether the object affecting us be a physical 
good, as in the feeling of hunger ; a mental enjoyment, 
as in the desire of honour or knowledge ; or the welfare 
of another, as in the benevolent affections. In all alike 
we may trace the fundamental distinction of conscious- 
ness, the distinction between myself affected and the 
object affecting me, whether that object be regarded as a 
reality separate from myself or not. The subjective 
feeling of pleasure or pain may, we think, be appropri- 
ately expressed by the term emotion ; while the objec- 
tive tendency to the thing by which that emotion is 
caused may be indicated, not improperly, by the term 
passion, which, in its ordinary signification, appears to 
denote those particular propensities of our nature 
which, in the language of Bishop Butler, have for their 
objects "external things themselves, distinct from the 
pleasure arising from them."* The passions, as thus 
described, may be excited by an object either perceived 
as present, or imagined as absent ; the object being in 

* Sermon xi — "On the love of our neighbour." 



156 METAPHYSICS. 

the one case presented, in the other represented. When 
this representation is accompanied by a conviction of the 
possibility or impossibility of obtaining the object, the 
passion assumes the form of hope or despair — terms 
which, in their widest sense, do not denote special 
passions, but general relations in which any particular 
passion may stand towards its own object. But the 
passion, as actually existing, whether directed towards 
a present or an absent object, is in every case an indi- 
vidual state of mind, intuitively discerned as now present 
in consciousness.* 

The further subdivisions of the passions may be 
made on various principles, and from various points of 
view. The general features which have been above 
described as characteristic of this class of mental phe- 
nomena will, in their special manifestations, be subject 
to various modifications, according to the nature of the 
object upon which they are exercised, or the constitu- 
tion and training of the subject in whom they exist. 
To attempt a complete enumeration of the complex 
modes of consciousness thus arising would be impos- 
sible : we must content ourselves with selecting some 
one principle of division, and pointing out a few of the 



* Aristotle, Rhet. i. 11. AvdyKT) iravra tol 7)84a % ev t<£ aladdueadac 
elvai irapdPTa, ij iu r<y fie/xvrjadat. yeyevrjfxiva, j) h t$ ekirlfav ntWovra • 
axaddvovrai yhp to, irapbvra, p.kp.vy\vraL dk tcl yeyevr)p.£va, ekirlfywi U r& 
fiiXkovra. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 157 

most important and universal of the feelings compre- 
hended under it. Perhaps, on the whole, the least 
objectionable principle of classification is that derived 
from the various classes of objects in relation to which 
the emotions of pleasure and pain, and the correspond- 
ing feelings of attraction or repulsion which constitute 
passion, may take place. In this point of view the 
passions may be divided, generally, into the two classes 
of desires and affections, according as the object to which 
they are related is a thing or a person, — regarded as a 
possession to be sought for or avoided, or as a moral 
agent, capable of mutual relations of sympathy or 
antipathy. Under the general head of Desires may be 
specified the appetites, which take their rise from bodily 
conditions, and are common to men and brutes, — com- 
prising the feelings of hunger, thirst, and sexual instinct ; 
and the desires, as they are sometimes called in a special 
sense, such as the desire of knowledge, of society, of 
esteem, of power, and of superiority, together with the 
counter-feelings of repugnance to the opposite class of 
objects.* The Affections embrace our social, domestic, 
and religious feelings in general ; the love of friends, of 
kindred, of God ; and the special modifications of feeling 
arising from our particular relations with individuals 
among our fellow-men ; such as respect, gratitude, com- 

* For the details of this classification, see Stewart's Philosophy of 
the Active and Moral Powers. 



158 METAPHYSICS. 

passion, anger, contempt, and so forth. The principles 
of Self-love and Benevolence, which are sometimes 
included in this enumeration, should be considered, not 
as original intuitions, but rather as derived conceptions, 
in which the several personal or social passions and 
their respective objects, together with their moral rela- 
tions and observed consequences, are generalised into 
the comprehensive notions of a regard for the welfare of 
ourselves or of others. 

The complete treatment of the emotions and passions 
belongs to the province of moral philosophy. To the 
metaphysician they are important, chiefly in two points 
of view, psychologically, as individual phenomena of con- 
sciousness, perceived intuitively, and therefore capable 
of being conceived reflectively ; and ontologically, as 
regards the light which they may be able to throw on 
the problem of the real existence of the subject or 
object to which they are related. In this latter point 
of view they will come again under our notice hereafter. 

OF THE MORAL FACULTY. 

Every passion, as we have seen, is ultimately related 
to an object regarded as the cause of agreeable or dis- 
agreeable emotions. But between the passion and its 
object there is always an intervening medium of com- 
munication, — the action by which the object is to be 



PSYCHOLOGY. 159 

obtained or avoided. Pleasure and pain, so far as they 
are the objects of desire and aversion, do not properly 
lie in the things by which they are caused, but in the 
actions by which those things are brought into contact 
with the person affected. But the actions, and in some 
degree also the feelings which prompt them, may be 
exhibited in another point of view, not merely as plea- 
sant or painful, but as right or wrong. The existence 
of these terms, or their equivalents, in every language, 
indicates a corresponding phenomenon in the universal 
consciousness of mankind, which no effort of ingenuity 
can explain away. Indeed, the very ingenuity of the 
various attempts that have been made to identify the 
conception of right with that of expedient, or agreeable, or 
any other quality, is itself a witness against them ; for 
no such elaborate reasoning would be required, were it 
not necessary to silence or pervert the instinctive testi- 
mony of a too stubborn consciousness.* That the terms 
right and wrong indicate a special class of mental 
phenomena, discernible in the contemplation of actions 
in themselves, and not merely inferred from observation 
of their consequences, is a truth guaranteed by the uni- 
versal language of mankind, by the testimony of every 
man's own consciousness, and by the inconsistencies and 

* For some valuable remarks on the moral faculty as an original 
intuitive principle, See M'Cosli, Method of the Divine Government, pp. 
294, 301. 



160 METAPHYSICS. 

mutual contradictions of its several antagonists. But 
what are these phenomena, and by what means are they 
discerned ? Are they qualities of actions in themselves, 
or states of the mind which contemplates actions ? Are 
they simple qualities, or complex ; perceived intuitively, 
or conceived reflectively? Are they the objects of a 
special mental faculty, or are they discerned by the 
same faculty which perceives truth and falsehood in 
other cases ? These doubts may be summed up, in the 
language of Stewart, in the two following questions, 
which, as he says, seem to exhaust the whole theory of 
morals : — " First, by what principle of our constitution 
are we led to form the notion of moral distinctions, — 
whether by that faculty which perceives the distinction 
between truth and falsehood in the other branches of 
human knowledge, or by a peculiar power of perception 
(called by some the moral sense) which is pleased with one 
set of qualities and displeased with another ? Secondly, 
what is the proper object of moral approbation ; or, in 
other words, what is the common quality or qualities 
belonging to all the different modes of virtue ? Is it 
benevolence, or a rational self-love, or a disposition 
(resulting from the ascendant of reason over passion) to 
act suitably to the different relations in which we are 
placed?"* 

The two alternatives proposed in the first of the 

* Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers, h. ii. chap. 5. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 1G1 

above questions represent the antagonist views of the 
two schools of philosophy which made common cause 
with each other in protesting against the denial of all 
natural right and wrong, which characterised the phi- 
losophy of Hobbes. The first represents the opinion 
of Cud worth and his followers, who refer our know- 
ledge of right and wrong to a decision of the reason or 
understanding. The second is the opinion of Hutcheson 
and those who with him maintain the existence of a 
faculty of moral 'perception or sense. The language in 
which the two theories are worded, though historically 
accurate, as representing the views of their respective 
authors, is in some degree defective in philosophical pre- 
cision. On the one hand, there is no single faculty of 
mind which distinguishes between truth and falsehood 
in the various branches of knowledge. The under- 
standing or reason, taken in its widest sense to denote 
the reflective faculty in general, contributes only one 
element to the decision. Truth and falsehood depend 
upon the agreement or disagreement between the repre- 
sensations which we make of an object in thought, and 
the qualities presented by that object in intuition ; and 
this agreement or disagreement can only be ascertained 
by the co-operation of the two faculties. How, for 
instance, do we know that it is true to conceive snow 
as white, and false to conceive it as black I The 
understanding furnishes the conception ; but lias the 

m 



162 METAPHYSICS. 

sight, therefore, nothing to do with the decision ? Could 
we answer the question by the mere act of thought, 
without reference to the perception of a present, or the 
recollection of a past fact of intuition ? If there were 
no moral intuition, truth and falsehood could have no 
place in moral thought ; for the conception of right or 
wrong, even supposing that it could exist, would be 
related to no facts with which it could agree or dis- 
agree. Moral truth and falsehood, like all other truth 
and falsehood, must consist in the agreement or dis- 
agreement of thoughts with facts ; and this may take 
place in two different ways, as regards the mental 
phenomenon or the extra-mental reality. For example : 
I may, owing to an inaptitude for mental analysis, have 
an inaccurate conception of the characteristics of a moral 
judgment which I have myself exercised. Hence will 
result a false representation of the phenomenon of 
moral approbation. Or I may have conceptions of 
right and wrong, perfectly in accordance with the facts 
of my own consciousness, but at variance with some 
higher standard of right and wrong per se. The latter 
is an ontological falsehood, the criterion of which we are 
not yet in a position to determine. The former is a 
psychological falsehood, which can only be corrected by 
comparing the thought with the intuition to which it is 
related. But in neither case can the act of thought 
guarantee its own accuracy ; else would every Conception 



PSYCHOLOGY. 163 

be equally true, for the sole reason that it is conceived. 
On the other hand, Hutcheson and his followers, 
as Stewart has observed, while rightly admitting 
the existence of a moral intuitive faculty (whether it be 
called sense or not is unimportant), unfortunately, in 
their description of its operation, were too much misled 
by a false analogy derived from the perception by the 
bodily senses of the secondary qualities of matter. It 
is no necessary part of the theory of a moral sense that 
it should be represented as perceiving qualities only in 
so far as they are pleasing or displeasing. It is true that 
the exercise of our bodily senses produces pleasure as 
well as information ; but the perception of a fact is 
logically distinguishable from the sensation of an affec- 
tion ; and, however much in practice they may be 
united, either may be conceived to exist independently 
of the other. If, in like manner, we distinguish between 
the moral perception of an act as right or wrong, and 
the accompanying moral sensation of the pleasing or 
displeasing manner in which we are affected by those 
qualities, the hypothesis of a moral sense may be freed 
from most of the excrescences which have hitherto dis- 
figured it in the systems of its advocates, and have afforded 
the chief handle to the criticisms of its antagonists. 

An illustrious critic of this hypothesis* has remarked 

* M. Cousin. Sec his review of Hutcheson's system, Cours tk 
1819, Lecon 14. 



164 METAPHYSICS. 

with truth, that in our perception of the moral char- 
acter of an act, whether done by ourselves or by others, 
we may trace the united action of a moral judgment 
and a moral sentiment. Our feeling of indignation at 
an act of treachery may be more or less vivid, according 
to our proximity to the time and place at which the act 
was committed, or to our relation to the doer or the 
sufferer. Our condemnatory judgment is independent 
of the accidents of time, place, or circumstance ; we 
pronounce the action to be evil with the same assur- 
ance, whether it was done yesterday, or ten years, or 
a thousand years ago; whether the victim was our 
dearest friend or a complete stranger. Of these two 
elements of moral consciousness, the judgment is the 
superior, the permanent, the essential factor ; the sen- 
timent is the inferior, the fluctuating, the accidental 
one. The sentiment, he adds, may be due to a moral 
sense; but the judgment, which is derived from the 
universal and necessary ideas of good and evil, can 
belong to no other faculty than the reason. 

The above analysis, though true so far as it goes, is, 
like that which it criticises, incomplete. The moral 
judgment itself may be further divided into two con- 
stituent parts ; the one, an individual fact, present now 
and here ; the other, a general law, valid always and 
everywhere. That this particular act of my own, at 
the moment of being committed, is wrong, is a fact 



PSYCHOLOGY. 165 

presented immediately by the judgment of conscience. 
That all acts of the same kind, whensoever or by whom- 
soever committed, are necessarily wrong, is a judgment 
formed by the reason through the medium of the 
general notions of acts of a certain class, and of right 
and wrong. The latter, as an universal and necessary 
truth, may be referred to the same faculty, and formed 
under the same conditions, as other truths of the same 
kind. The former, as the presentative condition of 
moral thought, must be allowed to possess that chrono- 
logical priority which in other cases is admitted to exist 
in individual facts, as compared with universal notions. 
A more accurate theory of the nature and origin of 
moral judgment than is contained either in the moral 
reason of Cudworth, or in the moral sense of Hutcheson, 
or even in M. Cousin's union of the two, may, we think, 
be proposed in accordance with what has been said in 
the preceding pages of the complex nature of conscious- 
ness in general. It has been before observed, that every 
mode of consciousness, to be known as such, must 
possess a certain degree of clearness and distinctness, 
and that this is the product of the combined action of 
the presentative and representative faculties. The dis- 
tinctions of language are doing their work ; the task 
of education is going on ; the phenomena of conscious- 
ness are assuming shape and consistency, before we are 
capable of discerning the various transitory conditions 



166 METAPHYSICS. 

of our minds, or of distinguishing them one from 
another. A conscious act of pure moral sense, like a 
conscious act of pure physical sense, if it ever takes 
place at all, takes place at a period of which we have 
no remembrance, and of which we can give no account. 
To have a clear notion of moral obligation as such, we 
must have reflected upon it ; and to reflect upon it, we 
must have obscurely experienced various acts in uni- 
son with it, and others distinct from it. At what time 
the notions of good, bad, and indifferent, first clearly 
presented themselves to the mind, it is as impossible to 
say, as it is to determine when we first distinctly recog- 
nised as such, and severed from each other, the visible 
phenomena of white, "black, and grey. All that we can 
hope to do is, by subsequent analysis of the compound 
phenomenon, to detect in its composition an intuitive and 
a reflective element, growing side by side from the first 
dawn of intelligence, and contributing their respective 
shares to the gradual development of their mutual pro- 
duct. Our mental, no less than our bodily constitution, 
testifies that we are the work of One whose judgments 
are unsearchable and his ways past finding out. The 
results alone we know ; the creative process we can but 
darkly conjecture. " As thou knowest not what is the 
way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the 
womb of her that is with child ; even so, thou knowest 
not the works of God who maketh all." 



PSYCHOLOGY. 1G7 

The preceding remarks have in some degree fur- 
nished by anticipation the answer to an objection which 
a distinguished author has recently urged against the 
theory of a moral sense as usually understood. " The 
judgment of man," it has been said, " concerning actions 
as good or bad, cannot be expressed or formed without 
reference to language, to social relations, to acknow- 
ledged rights ; and the apprehension of these implies 
the agency of the understanding in a manner quite 
different from the perceptions of the bodily senses."* 
Tf there is any truth in the view which has been taken 
in the preceding pages of the operations of the bodily 
senses, it appears that the perceptions of these also aie 
not so independent of the agency of the understanding 
as is usually supposed ; and that there is at least suffi- 
cient analogy between our physical and moral intuitions 
to justify the metaphorical use of the term sense, to 
denote the mode of action of the latter. But there still 
remains a point in which the ordinary theory needs 
correction. It is commonly said, that by the operation 
of the moral sense we perceive immediately the char- 
acter of acts, whether done by ourselves or by others. 
The assertion, that we are immediately conscious of the 
morality of another person's actions, appears to be an 
error of the same kind in relation to our moral percep- 
tions, as the assertion that we are immediately conscious 

* Whewell, Preface to Butler's Three Sermons. 



168 METAPHYSICS. 

of the past in memory is in relation to our bodily 
senses. To be directly conscious that this act, now 
being committed, or about to be committed, is right or 
wrong, I must be directly conscious of two things : of 
a law of obligation, commanding a certain person to act 
in a certain way, and of the course now before that 
person, as agreeing or disagreeing with such law. 
But I cannot be directly conscious of a law of obliga- 
tion as it exists in another person's mind : I can only 
infer its existence by representing his mind as similarly 
constituted to my own. If man were not a free 
agent, his acts, whether beneficial or hurtful in their 
physical results, could have no moral character as right 
or wrong. But I cannot be immediately conscious of 
the free agency of any other person than myself ; and, 
were it not for the direct testimony of my own con- 
sciousness to my own freedom, I could regard human 
actions only as necessary links in the endless chain of 
phenomenal cause and effect. It is obvious, therefore, 
that the intuitive perception of moral qualities cannot 
extend beyond our own actions, in which alone we are 
directly conscious of a law of obligation and of a 
voluntary obedience or disobedience to it. The actions 
of other men may be known presentatively in their 
material aspect as beneficial or hurtful ; for this is a 
relation external to the mind of the agent. They cannot 
be presentatively known in their moral aspect as good 



PSYCHOLOGY. 109 

or evil ; for this is an internal relation, existing in the 
hidden depths of another's consciousness. 

The substance of the above remarks may be briefly 
summed up as follows : — Moral consciousness, in the 
only form in which it can be distinctly recognised in 
the mind, consists, like all other consciousness, of a 
preservative and a representative element ; the one 
being necessary to its first formation, the other to its 
completeness and recognition as what it is. Xeither 
reason alone nor sense alone can account for the 
existence of the moral judgment as a fact of conscious- 
ness, whether we regard it in its subjective aspect, as 
an emotion, pleasant or painful, analogous to sensation 
proper, or in its objective aspect, analogous to percep- 
tion proper, as exhibiting a voluntary act in relation to 
a law. The presentative element must be referred to a 
special faculty of moral intuition or sense, — in one 
word, to avoid more objectionable phrases, to conscience, 
— whose object, like that of all intuitions, is an indi- 
vidual phenomenon now present : — a special faculty, 
we say, in the only point of view in which the mind 
can be said to have distinct faculties at all, namely, on 
the ground of a difference of which we are conscious in 
the corresponding objects. The representative element, 
on the other hand, in common with all other general 
notions, may be referred to the single faculty of the 
understanding. 



170 METAPHYSICS. 

Up to this point, the moral problem is properly 
psychological ; its purpose being only to determine 
what are the characteristic features and origin of the 
moral judgment, regarded as a fact of consciousness. 
The second question which Stewart proposes as com- 
pleting the theory of morals, — "What is the proper 
object of moral approbation ? or what is the common 
quality or qualities belonging to the different modes of 
virtue ?" — is one which belongs not to Psychology, but 
to Moral Philosophy, which, in this point of view, may 
be considered as a branch of Ontology ; its office being 
to inquire into the nature of virtue, regarded, not as a 
mental perception, but an extra-mental reality. The 
moral decisions of conscience cannot by themselves be 
the ultimate criterion of right and wrong ; for if so, 
whose conscience is to be taken as the standard? If 
the individual conscience is ever mistaken in its judg- 
ments ; if crimes can ever be committed which seem no 
crimes to the perpetrator ; there must be a standard of 
right and wrong per se 9 by which our moral intuitions 
and our moral conceptions must both, in ultimate 
appeal, be tested. To ask what this standard is, though 
the most important of all questions in speculative 
morals, would be out of place here ; the only legiti- 
mate office of the psychological inquirer being to ana- 
lyse and exhibit the characteristic features of the mental 
phenomenon of moral approbation. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 171 



OF VOLITION. 



The correlative terms, will and volition, are usually 
distinguished, in the language of philosophy, as apply- 
ing, the one to the general faculty, the other to the 
special acts in which it manifests itself. A volition is 
an act of the will ; and our several volitions are classi- 
fied as proceeding from one and the same faculty. Will, 
then, like sense and reason, does not indicate a special 
phenomenon of consciousness, but is a general name 
for the power from which special phenomena pro- 
ceed, and which itself exists in consciousness only 
as it is manifested in operation. The examination, 
therefore, of this portion of our consciousness must 
be attempted in relation to the internal acts, which, 
in the usual language of philosophy, are denominated 
volitions. 

That Volition is not identical with Desire, and cannot 
properly be classed with the phenomena of emotion, was 
one of the earliest results of psychological analysis, and 
is, indeed, obvious to the consciousness of every man 
who has experienced the two, however much they may 
have been confounded together by the perversity of a 
few unscrupulous system-makers. A man may be 
thirsty, and yet refuse to drink ; his desire drawing 
him one way, and his will determining him in the 



172 METAPHYSICS. 

other.* Desires are not under our own control ; they 
arise naturally and necessarily on the occasion of the 
presence of objects which affect us agreeably or dis- 
agreeably. "We cannot help being so constituted as to 
derive pleasure from certain objects ; we cannot help 
feeling attracted to pleasant objects ; for the pleasure 
constitutes the attraction. But we can help yielding to 
the attraction of desire when felt; and we can help 
putting ourselves in the way of feeling it. Desire may 
be vicious as well as action; but only in so far as 
either is combined with volition. I may place myself 
in the way of desirable objects/ and, in so doing, my 
act is voluntary. I may give my attention to thoughts 
calculated to excite desire, and the attention is a volun- 
tary act ; but in the mere fact that an object, when 
present, no matter how its presence is procured, raises a 
corresponding emotion in the mind, there is no volition, 
and consequently no moral character. Hence it has 
long been established as a canon in morals by the 
soundest writers on the question, that virtue and vice 
depend, not on the existence of desires, but on their 
relation to the will.f 

* Plato, Republic, b. iv. p. 439. Cf. Aristotle, Eth. Nic. B. iii. 
c. 2. Upoaipeaet fiev eiridvfila havriovrai, eiridvjxLa 8' tinQviiLa. oii. The 
distinction between will and appetite or desire is well stated by Hooker, 
E. P. B. 1, ch. vii. sec. 3. 

t See especially Bishop Butler, Sermons i. ii. v. xi. ; Analogy, 
chaps, iv. v. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 173 

But volition must be further distinguished, both 
from the judgment which precedes, and from the 
external act which follows it.* For example, a man 
determines to take a walk for the benefit of his health. 
The feeling that health is desirable is not voluntary ; 
the conviction that walking is beneficial to health is not 
voluntary. The one is an emotion, which by his con- 
stitution he cannot help having : the other is a relation 
between natural cause and effect, which he cannot make 
other than it is, and cannot judge to be other than he 
knows it to be. But, while conscious that health is 
desirable, and while conscious that walking promotes 
health, he is also (and this forms a distinct pheno- 
menon) conscious that it is in his own power to take or 
not to take the means necessary to the end. We can- 
not at present inquire how far this consciousness of 
power answers to any corresponding reality in the 
nature of things. We are not yet in a condition to 
examine the paradox maintained by some philosophers, 
that consciousness deludes us with a fallacious appear- 
ance of liberty. We are concerned only with the mental 
phenomenon that a man does, in certain states of con- 
sciousness, feel possessed of a power of choosing between 
two alternatives, which in certain other states he does 
not feel. But again : Suppose that the man determines 

* Cousin, Cours dc 1819, Lecon xxiii. Coum dc 1S29, Le^OD xxv. 



174 METAPHYSICS. 

to walk, but finds himself, by a sudden stroke of para- 
lysis, deprived of the use of his limbs ; here again we 
must distinguish between the fact of determination, 
which is always in our own power, and the fact of 
bodily motion, which may or may not be in our own 
power, according to circumstances. The power of loco- 
motion (I do not now speak of that of muscular effort) 
is not, properly speaking, a fact of consciousness at all ; 
that is to say, it is not a fact whose existence is iden- 
tical with our knowledge of its existence. We may 
suppose the case of a man whose limbs have become 
paralysed without his being aware of it. The conscious 
portion of the effort to move is the same as before, but 
the physical sequence is interrupted. Or we may sup- 
pose the act of motion to take place as a consequence 
of volition, without the person being conscious of the 
relation between the volition and the act. The latter 
supposition, indeed, is actually true in all cases ; for 
motion is the remote, not the immediate, consequence of 
volition ; and between the one and the other there is 
an intervening nervous and muscular action, of which 
we not only are not conscious in the act of moving, 
but which we may pass a whole lifetime without dis- 
covering. 

Some philosophers of no small eminence, especially 
in this country, have maintained that we are not directly 
conscious of mind or self, but only of its several modifi- 



PSYCHOLOGY. 175 

cations.* It is in relation to the phenomena of volition 
that the error of this theory is most manifest. If, in the 
mental state which corresponds to the judgment, / will, 
there is no consciousness of 7", but only of will, it is im- 
possible to place the essential feature of volition, as has 
been done above, in the consciousness of myself having 
power over my own determinations. Will, and not i", 
being the primary fact of consciousness, the causative 
power of volition must be sought in the relation between 
Mill and some subsequent phenomenon ; and so sought, 
it will assuredly never be found.t It cannot be found 
where Locke sought it, — in the relation between the 
determination of the will and the consequent motion of 
the limb ; for the determination is not the immediate 
antecedent of the motion, but only of the intervening 
nervous and muscular action. 1 cannot, therefore, be 
immediately conscious of my power to move a limb, 
when I am not immediately conscious of my power to 
produce the antecedent phenomena. Nor yet can the 
causative power be found where Maine de Biran sought 
it, — in the relation of the will to the action of the nerves 
and muscles ; for this relation may at any time be in- 
terrupted by purely physical causes, such as a stroke of 

* Locke, Essay, b. ii. chap. xxii. sec. 3, 5. Hume, Treatise of 
11 a me 1} Nature,]), iv. sec. 5, 6. Reid, Intellectual Powers, Essay v. 
chap. ii. Stewart, Elements, Introduction, parti. See the next Bection 
on the "Consciousness of Personality." 

t Cousin, Fragments FhUosophiques, Preface do la premiere edition. 



176 METAPHYSICS. 

paralysis ; and in that case no exertion of the will can 
produce the desired effect. We can escape from this 
difficulty — the stronghold of scepticism and necessita- 
rianism — by one path only, and that is by a more accu- 
rate analysis of the purely mental state, which will dis- 
cover an immediate consciousness of power in myself 
determining my own volitions. 

The essential characteristic of Volition, as presented 
to the mind, consists in the consciousness of a power of 
choosing between tiuo alternative determinations. But, by 
a natural association, as in the case of the acquired per- 
ceptions, we are led to connect the volition with its most 
striking, not with its most immediate consequence, and 
thus to believe that we have an immediate consciousness 
of our power to move the limbs of the body. The latter 
act is indeed voluntary, as being the foreseen, though 
remote, consequence of a volition ; the remoteness of the 
consequence not affecting the moral responsibility ; just 
as a man who shoots another is guilty of murder, though 
his immediate act is not to inflict the wound, but to pull 
the trigger. But the connection between volition and 
its remote consequences is not presented in consciousness, 
but inferred. The importance of the will as an element 
of consciousness, and its influence upon the other phe- 
nomena, may be in some degree estimated by comparing 
the characteristics of consciousness in its ordinary state 
with those which it presents during a dream. In the 



PSYCHOLOGY. 177 

latter state tlie functions of volition, properly so called, 
are altogether suspended.* We may seem to ourselves 
to act as well as to suffer ; but the action is not accom- 
panied by a consciousness, at the moment of its per- 
formance, of a power to act otherwise. In other words, 
our actions during a dream are spontaneous, but not 
voluntary, being never presented to the consciousness in 
the form of a choice between two alternatives. Hence 
our inability during sleep to break off or change the 
direction of the train of ideas which is passing through 
the mind. Hence, too, the absence of all power of 
reflecting upon those ideas ; and the natural consequence, 
that fancies the most absurd, and events the most im- 
probable, are never at the time discerned as being so. 

* Stewart, in one of the most interesting chapters of his Elements of 
the Philosophy of the Human Mind, argues that the power of volition 
itself is not suspended during sleep, but only the influence of the will 
over the thoughts and actions. But he has not sufficiently distinguished 
between merely spontaneous acts and those which may properly be called 
voluntary. We are conscious in a dream of making an effort ; but we 
are not conscious at the moment that it is in our power not to make it. 
Thus, though the active function of the mind is retained, the essential 
feature of volition has disappeared. This remark, however, applies only 
to the conscious exercise of volition in determining our own mental 
states. It is probable that spontaneity itself, at least in rational beings, 
is but a lower form of volition : and attention, in which some amount of 
volition is always implied, seems to be a necessary condition of all con- 
sciousness, sleeping or waking. At any rate, it is necessary to recollec- 
tion ; and thus the phenomena of dreaming would, without some co-oper- 
ation of the voluntary energy, either not take place at all, or be to the 
waking man as though they had never been. 

N 



178 METAPHYSICS. 

It is impossible to compare the events of a dream with 
the natural course of things ; for to do so we must make 
a voluntary effort to recall the latter to mind ; — we must 
will to withdraw our attention from the phenomenon 
before us, and to fix it upon the remembrance of our 
past experience. It may be conjectured, with all the 
probability of which conjectures on such points are sus- 
ceptible, that if man were, as so many philosophers have 
maintained, a necessary agent, determined even in his 
volitions by antecedent phenomena, his waking state 
would resemble that of a dream : he would be astonished 
at nothing. Astonishment, as IPlato and Aristotle have 
said, is the commencement of philosophy * When we 
examine, compare, judge, and pronounce sentence upon 
the phenomena of our own consciousness, we assert our 
right to a place distinct from, and superior to, that of a 
mere link in the chain of phenomena ; we exercise the 
privilege of our conscious existence as beings above phe- 
nomena ; though the being and the phenomenon are 
manifested together as parts of one and the same com- 
plex act of consciousness. 

We may notice, in conclusion, the light that is 
thrown, by the phenomena of dreaming, on some of those 
remarkable cases of passive subjection to another person, 
which, under the names of Mesmerism, Hypnotism, or 

* Theatetus, p. 155. Metaph. i. 2, 9. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 170 

Electro-Biology, have of late years excited so much 
public attention, and given rise to such strange and 
unfounded theories of physical or hyperphysical agency. 
These states exhibit, in their ordinary features, little 
more than the mental phenomena of sleep without the 
accompanying bodily conditions. The mental pheno- 
mena of sleep exhibit two principal characteristics : — 1. 
They show the power of the mind to produce, by its 
internal agency, sensible phenomena, having all the 
vividness and apparent reality of those communicated by 
impressions from without. 2. They show that the mind, 
under certain circumstances, may be so completely under 
the influence of a leading idea as to follow passively the 
train of associations suggested, without the slightest 
power of judging of their truth or falsehood, probability 
or absurdity. The principal difference between these 
phenomena and those of the above-mentioned states con- 
sists in the circumstance that the leading suggestion is, 
in the latter case, conveyed from without, by the oper- 
ator, instead of from within, by the patient's own mind. 
Is there any necessary law of connection between the 
mental state of suspended volition and the bodily state 
of suspended susceptibility to external impressions ? If, 
1 >y any artificial means, the former of these states can be 
produced without the latter (and this is partially the 
case, even without artifice, in reverie and absence of 
mind), we have a link to connect these psychological 



180 METAPHYSICS. 



marvels with the most familiar facts of our everyday 
experience.* 



OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF PERSONALITY. 

The universal language of mankind has established 
a distinction between the capacities of mind and matter, 
which philosophy has often, but in vain, attempted to 
explain away. We speak of the properties of material 
agents, of the faculties of the human mind.+ It is a 
property of lire to burn, of metals to conduct electricity, 
of a tree to bear fruit after its kind. Sensibility, memory, 
reason, are faculties of the mind. Yet the attributes of 
mind, as well as those of body, are known only by their 
effects. I know that I have a power of thinking, only 
because I actually think, — as I know that fire is cap- 
able of burning, only because it actually burns. What, 
then, is the distinction between the nature of intelligent 
and unintelligent beings, to the existence of which our 
language instinctively bears witness? The foundation 
of the distinction is to be found in the consciousness of 
self Whatever variety of phenomena may succeed one 
another within the field of consciousness, in all alike I 
am directly conscious of the existence of one and the 

* See Sir Henry Holland's Chapters on Mental Physiology, chap . ii. 
v. ; Carpenter's Principles of Human Physiology, p. 859 ; Quarterly 
Review, No. 186. 

t Jouffroy, Melanges Philosophiques, p. 312. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 181 

same indivisible Self, the centre and the possessor of each 
and all. Let system-makers say what they will, the un- 
sophisticated sense of mankind refuses to acknowledge 
that mind is but a bundle of states of consciousness, as 
matter is (possibly) a bundle of sensible qualities. There 
may be no material substratum distinct from the attri- 
butes of extension, figure, colour, hardness, etc. Matter 
may be merely a name for the aggregate of these, for we 
have no immediate consciousness of anything beyond 
them ; but, unless our whole consciousness is a delusion 
and a lie, self is something more than the aggregate of 
sensations, thoughts, volitions, etc. Our whole con- 
sciousness is manifested as a relation between a perma- 
nent and a changeable element, — a conscious self, affected 
in various manners. The notion of a state of conscious- 
ness, with no one to be conscious of it, is as absurd as 
the opposite fiction of a conscious self with nothing to be 
conscious of. If the latter has given rise to the extra- 
vagances of rational pyschology, the former is the basis 
of a not less extravagant reaction, which in its logical con- 
sequences leads to the consistent denial of personality, of 
freedom, of responsibility ; nay, of the very conceptions 
of substance and cause, the foundations of all philosophy. 
Consciousness is given to us as a relation ; and no 
effort of analysis can separate the two correlatives ; for 
analysis is itself an act of consciousness, and contains 
the same relation. We cannot conceive either factor of 



182 METAPHYSICS. 

consciousness apart from the other ; but, on the other 
hand, we cannot annihilate either in conceiving their 
product. We cannot analyse the judgment / will, and 
set an abstract I on the one side, and an abstract will on 
the other ; but neither can we conceive the entire judg- 
ment, save as the product of two constituent elements. 
Whatever may be the variety of phenomena of conscious- 
ness, — sensations, volitions, thoughts, imaginations, — of 
all we are immediately conscious as affections of one 
and the same self. It is not by any subsequent effort 
of reflection that I combine together sight and hearing, 
thought and volition, into a factitious unity or com- 
pounded whole : in each case I am immediately con- 
scious of myself seeing and hearing, thinking and willing. 
This Personality, like all other simple and immediate 
presentations, is indefinable ; but it is so because it is 
superior to definition. It can be analysed into no simpler 
elements ; for it is itself one element of a product which 
defies analysis. It can be made no clearer by description 
or comparison ; for it is revealed to us in all the clearness 
of an original intuition, of which description and com- 
parison can furnish only faint and partial resemblances. 
Eelation is the law of consciousness, and relation is 
the end of philosophy : for philosophy is only the articu- 
late expression of consciousness. Cogito, ergo sum, may 
indicate a legitimate passage from Thought to Being, from 
Psychology to Ontology ; but the thought and the being 



PSYCHOLOGY. 183 

alike are manifested only in the form of relation. Whe- 
ther that dualism, which in another country has become 
a byword for unphilosophical thinking, may be made 
the basis of a sounder philosophy than the mutilated and 
shapeless fragment which aspires to the name of unity, 
is a question which is probably reserved for a future 
generation to answer. This much, however, appears to 
be proved by experience as well as testified by reason, 
that it is hopeless to attempt to found philosophy on the 
annihilation of consciousness. 

We have now described the principal phenomena of 
the Intuitive Consciousness, in which are presented to us 
individual states of the mind in relation either to itself 
or to the material world. We have next to describe the 
phenomena of the Keflective Consciousness, in which the 
several intuitions, external or internal, are represented 
under general notions, and thus become objects of 
thought. 

OF REPRESENTATIVE OR REFLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS. 

The term representation has been used by philoso- 
phers in various senses. In the Leibnitzian and sub- 
sequent philosophies of Germany, this word, or its Ger- 
man equivalent Vorstcllung* is employed to denote any 

* Etymologieally, the term Vorstcllung means presentation rather 
than representation ; hut in its actual use in philosophy it is generally 
equivalent to the latter. 



184 METAPHYSICS. 

cognitive act, including even those obscure cognitions, 
as they are termed by Leibnitz, which do not amount to 
a conscious apprehension of an object as such. Thus 
Kant includes under the common genus of representa- 
tion the successive sub-classes of representation with 
consciousness, or perception ; which is divided into sub- 
jective perception or sensation, and objective perception 
or cognition ; the latter containing under it immediate 
cognition or intuition, and mediate cognition or con- 
ception* On the other hand, Sir William Hamilton, 
distinguishing between presentative and representative 
knowledge, and rightly referring ,the perceptions of the 
senses to the former class, uses the term representation 
to denote exclusively the cognition of individual objects 
by means of images resembling them.f Eepresentation, 
thus distinguished, is synonymous with imagination, and 
does not include the operations of thought properly so 
called, which have for their immediate object general 
notions or concepts. In the present work it has been 
found convenient to adopt an intermediate course. 
Kant's extension of the term representation, to include 
the intuitions of sense, involves, even on his own theory 
of sensitive perception, at least an unnecessary ambi- 
guity of language. The intuition, on that theory, is re- 
presentative of nothing that can possibly come within 

* KritiTc der reinen Vernunft, Traxisc. Dial. B. i. Abschn. 1. 
t Reid's Works, pp. 805, 809. Discussions, p. 13. , 



PSYCHOLOGY. 185 

the sphere of consciousness, but of an unknown and un- 
knowable thing in itself, or absolute reality out of all 
relation to human faculties. Concepts, on the contrary, 
are representative of intuitions, from which they are 
originally derived, and whose place they occupy in the 
processes of thought. But it is obvious that, in the ana- 
lysis of consciousness, the thing in itself, being ex hypo- 
thesis unknown and unknowable, may be dropped out of 
our reckoning altogether. The intuition, or conscious- 
ness of an individual object, being the commencement 
of our knowledge and the point beyond which it cannot 
penetrate, may be more accurately described as a state 
of presentative consciousness, of which thought, or repre- 
sentative consciousness, is the reflective sequel. On the 
other hand, Sir W. Hamilton, by confining the term 
representation to those modes of consciousness in which 
there is an actual and adequate imagination of an object, 
has perhaps narrowed the term too much from its origi- 
nal meaning, and restricted it to a sense which, however 
convenient in the controversy concerning perception, is, 
out of that controversy, unnecessary and likely to mis- 
lead. The general notion of man is representative of 
many individuals in their common qualities, and of any 
one individual, so far as those qualities are concerned, as 
much as the image which the mind forms of James or 
John is representative of the proper characteristics of 
that person. The notion is generalised from the indivi- 



186 METAPHYSICS. 

duals, and must be ultimately verified by reference to 
them ; and, though not resembling the individuals, and 
therefore incapable by itself of being depicted in the 
imagination, it becomes their substitute in the act of 
thought, just as the written word, which likewise bears 
no resemblance to the sound of speech, becomes the sub- 
stitute and representative of the word spoken. In one 
respect, indeed, the thought proper may be called repre- 
sentative in a stricter sense than the imagination ; for 
the imaginative consciousness, though representative, is 
presentative also, and, so far, has more affinity to sense 
than to thought. It is presentative of the image, which 
is itself an intuition, as well as representative of the 
object of sense. But the concept, so far as its object is 
concerned, is purely representative. It presents nothing 
on which the mind can rest as an adequate object of 
consciousness, — nothing which is not in its nature ob- 
viously incomplete and relative, — nothing, in short, but 
the fact of thinking at a particular time, and the sign in 
which the thought is exhibited. 

Eepresentative Consciousness, like presentative, can- 
not be considered as forming a complete act by itself. 
The phenomena of intuition by themselves present 
nothing but a confused impression of diversity, until 
they are classified and distinguished from each other 
under separate general notions ; and the notion, on the 
other hand, though in the ordinary exercise of thought 



PSYCHOLOGY. 187 

it may be employed apart from the consciousness of the 
object which it represents, can only be so separated by 
being associated with a further representation of itself, 
such as is furnished by the symbols of language. Pure 
thought, if by that expression is meant the conscious- 
ness of general notions and of nothing else, is an 
operation which may perhaps be possible to higher in- 
telligences, but which never takes place in the human 
mind. Our only choice lies between notions as exem- 
plified in individual objects, and notions as represented 
in signs spoken or unspoken ; for the sign, the clothing 
of our thought, accompanies our silent meditations as 
well as our audible utterances : d<pf}/uov gro^a, pgowfioe* 
is not a mere poetical metaphor, but the literal state- 
ment of a philosophical fact. Thinking, as Plato has 
observed/I" is but the conversation of the soul w T ith her- 
self ; and the instrument employed is the echo of that 
which forms the medium of communication with others. 
To this it may be added, that the notion, as represented 
in language, is but the substitute for the notion em- 
bodied in intuition, and derives all the conditions of its 
validity from the possibility of the latter ; for language, 
though indispensable as an instrument of thought, lends 
itself with equal facility to every combination, and thus 

* Sophocles, (Ed. Col. 132. 

f Thcatdus, p. 190. "E7arye rb 8o£dfciv Myeiv /caXtD ' kclI tt)p U^av 
\6yov elprj/jitvov, ov fxivroi -rrpds &\\ov oti8£ (pwvrj, dXXd aiyrj irpbs ai'tdv. 



188 METAPHYSICS. 

furnishes no criterion by which we can judge between 
sense and nonsense — between the conceivable and the 
inconceivable. A round square or a bilinear figure, is, 
as a form of speech, quite as possible as a straight line or 
an equilateral triangle. The mere juxtaposition of the 
words does not indicate the possibility or impossibility 
of the corresponding conception, until we attempt to 
construct, by intuition, an individual object in accord- 
ance with it. Language, like algebra, furnishes a 
system of signs, which we are able to employ in various 
relations without at the moment being conscious of the 
original signification assigned to each. But what our 
thoughts thus gain in flexibility they lose in distinct- 
ness, and the logical and algebraical perfections are thus 
in an inverse ratio to each other. It therefore becomes 
necessary, at the end of the process, and even occasion- 
ally during the intermediate stages, to submit the result 
to the test to which each step has been tacitly assumed 
to conform ; namely, the possible coexistence of the 
several groups of attributes in corresponding objects of 
intuition.* 

* ' ' Plerumque, prsesertim in analysi longiore, non totam simul natu- 
ram rei intuemur, sed rerum loco signis utimur, quorum explicationem 
in prsssenti aliqua cogitatione compendii causa solemus prseterinittere, 
scientes aut credentes nos earn habere in potestate : ita cum chiliogo. 
num, sec polygonum mille sequalium laterum cogito, non semper natu- 
ram lateris, et sequalitatis, et millenarii (seu cubi a denario) considero, 
sed vocabulis istis (quorum sensus obscure saltern atque imperfecte 
menti obversatur) in amnio utor loco idearum, quas de iis habeo, quoniam 



PSYCHOLOGY. 189 

From this use of language in thought arises the 
distinction, originally pointed out by Leibnitz, between 
intuitive and symbolical cognition. In the former we 
deal with the notions themselves, as exemplified in an 
individual object of intuition, real or imaginary. In the 
latter we deal with the same notions as represented by 
their symbols in language. The latter, however, is 
rather a substitute for consciousness than an act of con- 
sciousness itself. It implies a consciousness, indeed, of 
the act of thinking, but not immediately of the object 
about which we think * Like the bank-note, it is the 

memini me significationem istorum vocabulorum habere, explication em 
autem nunc judico necessariam non esse ; qualem cogitation em ccecam, 
vel etiam symbolicam appellare soleo, qua et in algebra, et in arithmetica 
utimur, imo fere ubique " (Leibnitz, Meditationes de Cognitione Veritate 
et Ideis). 

* Cognitio quae ipso idearum intuitu absolvitur, dicitur intuitiva, 
seu, rem intuitive cognoscere dicimur, quatenus ideae ejus, quam habe- 
mus, nobis sumus conscii. E. gr. Dum arborem preesentem intueor, 
mihique conscius sum eorum quae in eadem obtutu comprehendo, intuiti- 
vani arboris habeo cognitionem. Si triangulum mihi vi imaginationis 
tanquam in tabula delineatum, vel asserem triangularem representem, 
atque liujus figurae mihi conscius sim ; triangulum intuitive cognosco. 
Quodsi cognitio nostra terminatur actu quo verbis tantum enunciamus 
quae in ideas continentur, vel aliis signis eadem repraesentamus, ideas 
vero ipsas verbis aut signis indigitatas non intuemur, cognitio symbolica 
est. Ita cognitionem symbolicam habeo trianguli, si cogito ipsum esse 
figuram tribus lineis terminatam, trianguli vero ideam nullam, multo 
minus linearam quibus terminatur, ac numeri ternarii earundcm, ideas 
intueor. Similiter cognitionem chiliogoni symbolicam habeo, si verbis 
tacite quasi loquens mihi ipsi indigito, chiliogonum esse figuram mille 
lateribus terminatam, laterum vero singulorum, ac numeri millcnarii, 



190 METAPHYSICS. 

representative of value without having an intrinsic value 
of its own ; and, like the bank-note, its real worth 
depends on the possibility of its being at any time 
changed for the current coin of the realm. But, as in 
practice the note is treated as if it were the money 
which it represents, so it will be convenient, in the fol- 
lowing remarks, to treat symbolical knowledge as if it 
were itself the complete consciousness to which, if valid, 
it may be at any time reduced. We shall, therefore, 
treat both of intuitive and symbolical reflection under 
the general name of Eepresentative Consciousness or 
Thought. 

OF THE FOEM AND MATTER OF THOUGHT. 

The Form of consciousness in general has been ex- 
plained as consisting in relation to a conscious subject. 
The Form of representative consciousness in particular 
must be ascertained by observing in what manner the 
subject, as a thinker, moulds into thought the raw 
materials furnished by intuition. The conditions under 
which this is done constitute the laws of thought ; and 

ipsiusque chiliogoni ideam nullam intueor. Quod etiam signis aliis uti 
possimus ad res nobis reprsesentandas, prseter verba, vel sola arithmetica 
loquitur, ubi singularibus utimur notis numericis ad numeros quos- 
cuinque repraesentandos. Habes igitur hie signa uumerorum quae sunt 
a verbis, quibus enunciantur, diversa. Luculentiora exempla analysis 
recentiorum quam algebram vulgo dicimus suppeditat, ubi formulis ex 
Uteris atque signis aliis compositis notiones rerum exhibemus " (Wolf, 
Psychologies Empirica, sec. 286, 289). 



PSYCHOLOGY. 191 

the feature by which these laws are manifested in the 
product will be the form of thought. The former of 
these terms is strictly used with reference to an act of 
thought ; the latter, with reference to its product. Con- 
ceiving, judging, and reasoning are carried on under 
certain laius. Concepts, judgments, and reasonings ex- 
hibit certain forms. To ascertain what these are, we 
must endeavour to analyse the complex act of conscious- 
ness, and to separate those elements which appear to be 
contributed by the reflective act of the conscious subject. 
The office of Thought consists in arranging the con- 
fused materials presented to it in such a manner as to 
constitute an object This is done by limitation and 
difference. The object, as such, must contain a definite 
portion of the materials, and a portion only. "Without 
the first of these conditions, there would be no contents 
out of which the object could be constructed : without 
the second, there would be no distinct representation of 
an actual object, but a confused and imperfect conscious- 
ness of the universe of all possible objects. An oak, 
for example, to be discerned as an oak, and as nothing 
else, must have certain constitutive features of its own ; 
and these must in thought be separated from those of 
the surrounding objects. These two conditions of all 
thought, expressed in the most general terms, are the 
well-known logical laws of Identity and Contradiction, 
A is A, and A is not not- A ; that is to say, even- object, 



192 METAPHYSICS. 

to be conceived as such, must be conceived as having a 
character of its own, and as distinct from all others. 
But these two conditions necessarily involve a third. 
The object which I distinguish and that from which I 
distinguish it must constitute between them the uni- 
verse of all that is conceivable ; for the distinction is 
not between two definite objects of thought, but between 
the object of which I think and all those of which I do 
not think. Not-A implies the exclusion of A only, and 
of nothing else, and thus denotes the universe of all 
conceivable objects with that one exception. This re- 
lation, in its most general expression, constitutes a third 
law of thought, — that of Excluded Middle : every possible 
object is either A or not-A. (Princijnum exclusi medii 
inter duo contradictoria.) These three principles of 
identity, contradiction, and excluded middle, constitute 
the laws of thought as thought, and are the foundation of 
pure or formal Logic. 

Every complete act of consciousness is a compound 
of intuition and thought ; and the portion which is due 
to the act of thought as such, conducted under the 
above laws, will be the form of the representative con- 
sciousness. Now, by the act of thought, the confused 
materials presented to the intuitive faculties are contem- 
plated in three points of view : as a single object, as 
distinguished from other objects, and as forming, in 
conjunction with those others, a complete class or uni- 



PSYCHOLOGY. 193 

verse of all that is conceivable. We have thus the 
three forms (or as they are called by Kant, categories*) 
of unity, plurality, and totality ; conditions essential to 
the possibility of thought in general, and which may 
therefore be regarded as a priori elements of reflective 
consciousness, derived from the constitution of the un- 
derstanding itself, and manifested in relation to all its 
products. They are thus distinguished from the matter, 
or empirical contents, by which one object of thought 
is distinguished from another. The Matter of thought 
is derived from the intuitive faculties, and consists in 
the several presented phenomena which form the special 
characteristics of each object — as a man, a house, a tree, 

* Besides these three, which are classified as categories of quantity, 
Kant enumerates nine others — viz. three of quality, — reality, negation, 
and limation ; three of relation, — inherence and subsistence, causality 
and dependence, and community or reciprocal action ; and three of 
modality, — possibility or impossibility, existence or non-existence, and 
necessity or contingence. But the Kantian categories are not deduced 
from an analysis of the act of thought, but generalised from the forms of 
the proposition, which latter are assumed without examination, as they 
are given in the ordinary logic. A psychological deduction, or a pre- 
liminary criticism of the logical forms themselves, might have con- 
siderably reduced the number. Thus the categories of quality are 
fundamentally identical with those of quantity ; — reality, or rather affir- 
mation and negation, being implied in identity and diversity, and limi- 
tation in their mutual exclusion. The remaining categories are, to say 
the least, founded on a very questionable theory in logic ; and the two 
most important — those of substance and cause — present features which 
distinguish them from mere forms of thought. But these will have to 
be examined hereafter. 





194 METAPHYSICS. 

etc. In order to exhibit this distinction more com- 
pletely, it will be necessary to notice in detail the 
different operations into which thought is ordinarily 
divided. 

OF THE SEVEEAL OPERATIONS OF THOUGHT. 

The ordinary division of the representative faculties 
into Conception, or Simple Apprehension, Judgment, and 
Eeasoning, is properly a logical rather than a psycho- 
logical division, and relates to the products of thought 
rather than to the powers or operations by which 
those products are generated. Viewed as products of 
thought, projected, as it were, out of the thinking mind, 
and embodied in language, the Concept, the Judgment, 
and the Syllogism are expressed in different forms of 
speech, are susceptible of different relations one with 
another, and are subject to different logical rules and 
tests of validity. For logical purposes, therefore, they 
may properly be regarded as distinct objects, though 
susceptible of treatment upon common principles ; just 
as the different works of the same artist, though the 
result of the same productive power, may be arranged 
in different classes and criticised from different points 
of view. But the logical division of products does not 
necessarily imply a corresponding psychological division 
of faculties. The same faculty, operating by the same 
laws, may produce different results according to the 



PSYCHOLOGY. 195 

nature of the objects submitted to it ; just as the same 
artist may produce different works out of different 
materials. It is necessary, therefore, before we trans- 
plant our logical divisions into the field of psychology, 
to inquire upon what principles the latter science is 
justified in distinguishing at all between various powers 
of the human mind. 

The only natural and necessary principle of dis- 
tinction between objects is the numerical diversity of 
individuals. All other divisions are, to a certain extent, 
arbitrary and artificial, and subservient to the special 
purposes of this or that branch of study. The natu- 
ralist may class the man and the ape together, on 
account of certain points of similarity in their physical 
structure ; the moralist will place them as widely as 
the poles asunder, as rational and irrational, responsible 
and irresponsible agents. But no possible system of 
arrangement can make Socrates the same individual as 
Plato, or regard an act performed to-day as numerically 
one with a similar act performed three days ago. Nume- 
rically, not only intellectual operations of various kinds, 
but every single act of each kind, is distinct from every 
other. An act of reasoning which I perform to-day 
is numerically distinct from any similar act performed 
yesterday ; though both may be governed by the same 
laws, and applied to the same objects. But in the classi- 
fication of acts as specifically the same or different, much 



196 METAPHYSICS. 

must depend on the purpose which we have in view, 
and on the utility of certain relations for certain ends. 
A distinction which is useful for the purposes of logic 
may be worthless or injurious as regards psychology. 

The distinction between various faculties of the 
internal consciousness, if made at all, must be made on 
a principle exactly the reverse of that by which a similar 
distinction is made with respect to the external senses. 
The bodily organs of sensation are given as locally and 
numerically distinct from each other, and thus furnish 
a pre-existing basis for the classification of their several 
operations. Seeing and hearing are not only distinct 
phenomena of consciousness, but are performed by 
means of distinct organs ; and the faculty of seeing is 
at any rate so far distinct from that of hearing, that a 
man may be blind without being deaf, and deaf without 
being blind. But as regards the internal consciousness, 
we have no other ground for discriminating between 
different faculties than that which is furnished by the 
mental characteristics of the corresponding acts. We 
do not classify the acts from an acknowledged diversity 
of the faculties ; but we attempt to classify the faculties 
from some admitted or supposed diversity in the acts. 
The acts, therefore, must, on independent grounds, be 
determined to be identical or distinct in species, before 
we can unite or separate them as related to the same or 
different mental powers. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 197 

The distinction between the various reflective facul- 
ties is therefore not so much to be considered with 
regard to its truth or falsehood as with regard to its 
convenience or inconvenience. The theory of distinct 
mental organs corresponding to distinct acts of thought 
is untenable on any hypothesis but that of the crudest 
materalism. No sober-minded psychologist ever intends 
to represent the mental faculties as substantially and 
numerically distinct portions of the mind ; but, as entia 
rationis, they may furnish more or less convenient heads 
of classification, to connect or distinguish the similar 
or dissimilar mental acts or states of which we are 
successively conscious. In this point of view, the phe- 
nomena of conception, judgment, and reasoning, viewed 
merely as acts of thought, without reference to the 
diversity of the data from which the act commences and 
with which it deals, appear to furnish far more promi- 
nent features of similarity than of difference. They are 
effected by the same means ; they are governed by the 
same laws ; they are confined within the same limits ; 
they admit of the same distinctions of material and 
formal validity. The pscyhological analysis of any one 
may be applied, almost in the same words, to the others ; 
and, so far as thought alone is concerned, the same 
mental qualities are manifested in the right performance 
of each. In a psychological point of view, to enume- 
rate separate mental faculties and operations, as giving 



198 METAPHYSICS. 

rise to the various products of thought, is, to say the 
least, to encumber the science with unnecessary and 
perplexing distinctions. It will be sufficient to refer 
them to the single faculty of thought or reflection, the 
operation of which is, in all cases, comparison. The 
unit of thought is always a judgment, based on a com- 
parison of objects ; and the several operations of thought 
are, in ultimate analysis, nothing more than judgments 
derived from different data. In order to exhibit this in 
special instances, it will be convenient to adopt provi- 
sionally the logical classification, and to examine the 
phenomena of thought under the several heads of Con- 
ception, Judgment, and Reasoning. 



OF CONCEPTION. 

The ultimate object of all complete consciousness, 
intuitive or reflective, is, as has been already stated, an 
individual ; that is to say, an object occupying a defi- 
nite position in time or space, or both. It is not, 
however, necessary that the individual so presented to 
consciousness should be discerned as such by any dis- 
tinctive features. We must distinguish between an 
individual act of consciousness and an individual object " 
viewed out of relation to that act. The conditions 
of time and space are sufficient to distinguish the act 
from every other act, and the object at the moment of 



PSYCHOLOGY. 199 

perception from every other object ; but they are not parts 
of the object itself ; and they furnish no marks by which 
that object may be permanently distinguished from 
others. The same object may occupy different places at 
different times ; or different objects may successively 
occupy the same place. Hence, in addition to these 
conditions, which serve only for the intuitive cognition 
of a single individual at a particular moment, it is 
necessary to select others, which may serve as marks for 
the reflective cognition of an individual, as such, when 
different objects are compared together. In any given 
intuition we may or may not be conscious of marks 
sufficient for this purpose. I may see, for example, 
at a distance, three men standing together. They are 
unquestionably three individual men, each occupying 
his own position in space ; and this at the moment is 
sufficient to distinguish them from each other. But I 
may be unable, on account of the distance, to discern 
any distinctive features belonging to the objects them- 
selves. I discern them as three men, and that is all. I 
cannot say whether they are fair or dark, tall or short, 
acquaintances or strangers. I can distinguish them by 
nothing but their relative positions ; and these may at 
any moment be changed without my being able to dis- 
cover it. In other words, I perceive in the individuals 
only such qualities as are characteristic of a class. 

The above example may serve to illustrate the 



200 METAPHYSICS. 

process of imperfect or intuitive generalisation, which 
consists in directing the attention, voluntarily or invo- 
luntarily, to the common features of several objects 
presented to us, neglecting or not perceiving those qua- 
lities which are peculiar to each * It is not a distinct 
cognition of the class as a class, nor of the individuals 
as individuals ; but a confused perception of both 
together. To form a complete cognition of the indi- 
vidual, I must, by the aid of imagination, supply those 
distinctive features which I am unable clearly to per- 
ceive. To form a complete cognition of the class, I 
must separate the common attributes from their con- 
nection with a definite time and place. But how are 

* " Si in cognitione intuitiva acquiescimus, prima intellectus operatio 
absolvitor, dum in ideis duorum vel plurium individuorum simul nobis 
occurrentibus ad ea successive attentionem dirigimus quce in iisdem 
eadem sunt. Dum enim attentionem nostram successive dirigimus ad 
ea quas in ideis duorum vel plurium individuorum simul nobis occur- 
rentibus eadem sunt ; magis nobis conscii sumus quod jam in pluribus 
eadem percipiamus, quam quod percipiamus alia, atque adeo operatione 
intellectus ea a subjectis, quibus insunt, quasi separamus. Distincte 
igitur percipimus quae ad genus vel speciem illarum rerum pertinent, 
consequenter genera et species nobis distincte reprsesentamus. Quare 
cum generum et specierum reprsesentatio sit notio, distincta autem notio 
intellectus operatio sit eaque prima ; si in cognitione intuitiva acquies- 
cimus, prima mentis operatio absolvitor, dum in ideis duorum vel plu- 
rium individuorum simul nobis occurrentibus ad ea successive attentionem 
dirigimus, quae in iisdem eadem sunt. Hoc modo patet, quomodo nobis 
genera et species rerum in universali reprsesentare debeamus. Quod 
alius non detur modus in cognitione intuitiva genera et species rerum 
reprsesentandi, ex eo intelligitur, quod universalia, seu genera et species 
non existant nisi in singularibus, et ad notionem entis in universali non 



PSYCHOLOGY. 201 

attributes, apart from their juxtaposition in space, to be 
so connected together as to constitute a single object? 
The head and trunk and limbs of an individual man are 
connected together by continuity in space, and by that 
continuity constitute a whole of intuition, whether dis- 
tinctly recognised in that relation or not. How are the 
attributes of mankind in general to be separated from 
their position in space, and yet so united together as to 
constitute a whole of thought ? To effect this, we must 
call in the aid of language. The word is to thought 
what space is to perception. It constitutes the con- 
necting-link between various attributes, — the frame, as 
it were, in which they are set, — and thus furnishes the 

pertineant nisi determinationes intrinsicse pluribus singularibus seu 
individuis communes. Ponamus e. gr. duas arbores, cerasum atque 
prunum, oculis nostris una objici, ita ut utramque uno intuitu compre- 
hendere valeamus. Quodsi jam attentionem nostram ad folia utriusque 
arboris simul dirigimus, nobis conscii sumus nos in utraque percipere 
folia, et magis quidem conscii sumus, quam quod alia vel in iisdem 
arboribus vel extra eas una percipiamus. Quodsi jam porro attentionem 
nostram promovemus ad surculos in utraque arbore simul, eorundem 
eodem prorsus modo conscii nobis sumus. Et idem tenendum est de 
ramis atque truncis. Hac ratione absque omni vocabulorum \\>\ aliorum 
signorum usu, ea nobis distincte repr?esentamus, qua? arboribus com- 
munia sunt, atque adeo notionem hujus generis ingrediuntur, quod 
arboris nomine indigitamus. Atque ita simul intelligimus, quid sit 
mente separare ea, quae individuis communia sunt. Neque vt a ■<> utilitate 
sua caret nosse, quomodo in cognitione intuitiva prima intallectus oper- 
atiosese exerat, quoniam notionibus generum atque speoierum claritaa 
affunditur, si cognitio intuitiva cum symbolica conjungatur" (Wolf, 
Psychologia Empirica, sec. 320). 



202 METAPHYSICS. 

means by which the features characteristic of a class 
may be viewed apart from the individuals in which 
they are intuitively perceived, and combined into a 
complex notion or concept. Conception is thus, in the 
operations of thought, the counterpart of perception in 
those of sense. In the latter we are conscious of objects 
as extended ; i.e. as possessing parts related to each 
other by juxtaposition in space. In the former we are 
conscious of notions as embodied in words, and as com- 
posed of subordinate notions, which are themselves also 
expressed by similar symbols. 

Conception, apart from intuition, is only possible 
under the form of symbolical cognition, in which the 
notions are contemplated in their signs. In this form it 
consists in the enumeration, by means of verbal or other 
symbols, of the different parts constituting a given 
notion* Conception, intuitive as well as symbolical, 

* " In cognitione symbolica prima mentis operatio absolvitur recensione 
vocabulorum, vel aliorum signorum, quibis ea indigita?itur, quce no- 
tionem rei distinctam ingrediuntur. Etenim in cognitione symbolica 
tantummodo verbis enunciamus quae in ideis continentur, vel aliis signis 
eadem reprsesentamus, ideas vero ipsas verbis aut signis aliis indigitatas 
non intuemur. Quare cum in cognitione intuitiva prima mentis oper- 
atio absolvatur, si attentionem successive in idea rei ad ea dirigimus 
quae notionem distinctam generis vel speciei ingrediuntur, singula autem 
hsec enunciabilia sint, adeoque vocabulis vel signis aliis indigitari pos- 
sint ; in cognitione symbolica prima mentis operatio absolvi debet 
recensione vocabulorum, vel representation e aliorum signorum, quibus 
ea denotantur quse notionem rei distinctam ingrediuntur. Ita prima 
mentis operatio in cognitione symbolica arboris absolvitur, si dicimus 



PSYCHOLOGY. 203 

is thus in all cases a judgment. In intuitive concep- 
tion we judge that an object now present to the mind 
exemplifies a given notion : we pronounce, for example, 
that this is a man. In symbolical conception we pro- 
nounce that the notion comprehends such and such 
subordinate notions as its constituent parts. But sym- 
bolical cognition supposes intuitive cognition, actual or 
possible, as its condition. The existence of a class is 
possible if the existence of individual members is pos- 
sible ; for the universal has no existence apart from the 
individual. A class really exists, if individuals exist 
possessing the attributes of that class : a class may 
imaginably exist, if we can imagine the existence of in- 
dividuals possessing the corresponding attributes. But 
where neither perception nor imagination is possible — 
where the attributes are such that we cannot, either by 
observation or by construction, manual or mental, com- 
bine them into an individual unity of representation — 

vegetabile, quod ex tranco, ramis, surculis et foliis constat : etenim si- 
gillatim recensemus verba quibus ea indigitantur quoe in arboribua tan- 
quam communia distinguimus, consequenter quae notionem arboris in 
genere, quatenus distincta est, ingrediuntur. Non autem jam nobis 
quaestio est, utrum notio distincta sit completa atque determinate, atque 
oratione ista talis notio significetur, ut haec definitions loco inservire 
possit. Sufficit enim hie ea sigillatim enunciari qute mente ab idea ivi 
separantur, dum distincte nobis genus vel speciem reprsaentare cana« 
niur. Pendet enim cognitio symbolica ab intuitiva, quam supponit et 
ad quam refertur. Quicquid igitur huic deest, idem etiam illi dense 
debet " (Wolf, Rsijcholojia Emjnrica, sec. 328). 



204 METAPHYSICS. 

the class is inconceivable, and the words by which it 
is represented, however separately intelligible, are, in 
their combination, utterly unmeaning. 

Hence, as a general rule : Conception is only possible 
within the limits of possible intuition, — that is to say, 
those notions only are conceivable whose objects as indi- 
viduals can be presented to intuition in themselves or 
represented in their images. It is not necessary that 
the intuition should in all cases actually take place : it 
is sufficient if, from our intuitive knowledge of the 
several attributes, we know that there is no incompati- 
bility between them which renders their union in one 
representation impossible. I conceive a chiliagon when 
I define it as a regular figure of a thousand sides ; but I 
cannot distinctly represent in the imagination a thousand 
sides at once ; nor do I think it necessary to draw the 
figure in order to convince myself by actual experience 
of the possibility of the intuition. But I know that the 
property of inclosing space contains nothing incom- 
patible with the number of a thousand sides ; and that 
therefore the corresponding figure could be constructed, 
if necessary. Under this conviction, the symbolical 
takes the place of the intuitive cognition ; and we are 
enabled, by the aid of language, to think of the figure in 
certain relations without actually constructing it.* In 

* " Quoniam voeabula sunt signanostranim perceptionum, vel rerum 
per eas reprsesentatarum, dum verba recensemus quibus ea indigitantur 



PSYCHOLOGY. 205 

speaking of possible intuition as the test of conceiv- 
ability, we do not mean merely the intuition of the 
bodily senses. Fear, or anger, or volition, or moral 
approbation, or any individual state of the internal con- 
sciousness, is as much an object of intuition as a sound, 
or a colour, or an odour ; and is equally capable of 
being represented in an image or conceived under a 
general notion. Neither do we make any difference 
between the real and the imaginary, between the men- 
tally and the physically possible. A centaur is as 
conceivable as a horse or a man, whether the actual 
existence of such a creature is physically possible or 
not. I may imagine or conceive a stone remaining sus- 
pended in air or water, or mounting upwards instead of 

qiue notion em rei distmctamingrediuntur, ea singula ad perceptiones 
rerum in cognitione intuitiva locum habentes referre tenemur, etsi ad 
notionem eidem respondentem non attendamus,quod eadem ex crebro usu 
satis intelligere arbitremur. Quamobrem operatio intellectus prima in 
cognitione symbolica prazsupponit operationem ejusdem primam in intui- 
tiva. Hsec probe notanda sunt, ne demus sine mente sonos, nobisque per- 
suadeamus nos notionem rei habere, dum vocabula recensere valemus, 
etsi cognitionem symbolicam ad intuitivam reducer -e minime valeamus : 
quae reductio in eo consistit, ut ideam alicujus individui in nobis excite- 
mus, sive sensuum, sive imaginationis ope, ac attentio nostra successive 
ad ea dirigatur quae in re percepta insunt, atque deinde vocabula ad 
eadem referantur, prout singulis, vi significatus quern obtinent alias, 
subinde etiam vi etymologise ac compositionis, denotandis apta depre- 
henduntur, quatenus scilicet in etymologia vel compositione ratio de- 
nominandi latet, ad rem vocabulo denotatam manducens, nisi ipomet 
vocabula adea significanda in cognitione intuitiva transtulerimus, atque 
hujus facti meminerimus" (Wolf, Fsychologia Empirica, sec. 329). 



206 METAPHYSICS. 

falling downwards, though consistently with the natural 
law of gravitation it can do nothing but sink to the 
ground. 

Conception without an accompanying intuition is 
only possible, as we have already observed, by means of 
symbols ; but the thought which accompanies every 
complete intuition, and by which various presented 
attributes are regarded as constituting a whole, is an 
act of similar character, and may therefore properly 
be called by the same name. Conception may thus be 
distinguished as of two kinds : — Symbolical conception, 
in which a general notion, represented in language, 
is regarded as composed of other subordinate notions 
similarly represented ; and Intuitive conception, in which 
an individual object, present to sense or imagination, is 
regarded as a whole composed of certain presented parts. 
By this the object is thought under a concept ; being 
thereby separated from the surrounding objects of intui- 
tion, and regarded as a whole by itself* The former 
kind of conception is based on the latter, and derives its 
validity from it. It is in the latter, therefore, that the 

* "The understanding, thought proper, notion, concept, etc., may 
coincide or not with imagination, representation proper, image, etc. The 
two faculties do not coincide in a general notion ; for we cannot repre- 
sent man or horse in an actual image without individualising the uni- 
versal : and thus contradiction emerges. But in the individual, say- 
Socrates or Bucephalus, they do coincide ; for I see no valid ground 
why we should think, in the strict sense of the word, or conceive the 



PSYCHOLOGY. 207 

form and laws of conception will be most clearly exhi- 
bited. We must therefore analyse the complex act of 
intuitive conception, in order to detect, in the whole so 
conceived, the part contributed by the reflective faculty, 
and the laws under which it operates. 

It has been already observed that intuition and 
thought, the presentative and the representative con- 
sciousness, can be distinguished from each other, as 
actual states of mind, only logically, not really. To the 
recognition of either, as a fact of consciousness, the pre- 
sence of both is indispensable. To discern the element 
contributed by conception to the cognition of an object 
of consciousness as such, we may revert, for the moment, 
to the supposition of a being susceptible of a diversity of 
intuitions, but with no power of discerning wherein that 
diversity consists. In other words, we must suppose 
him divested of the faculty of comjmrison. In the exer- 
cise of sight, for example, he might at any moment be 
dimly conscious that he saw something ; he might also 
be dimly conscious that he had seen something before ; 
but he would not be conscious whether the two objects 
were the same or different in species ; for this implies a 

individuals which we represent " (Sir "W. Hamilton, Discussions, p. 
13). Wo may go even beyond this, and regard conception as coinciding, 
not merely with the imagination! but with one element of the perception 
of an individual object. For the combination of individual parts into a 
whole is a cognition of relations, and, as such, La properly an act of the 
understanding, operating by means of concepts. 



208 METAPHYSICS. 

reflective cognition of each under a separate notion. By 
the act of conception I discern a particular object as 
such ; and this implies at the same time a consciousness 
of its difference from something else. The act of reflec- 
tion has thus added a new element to the phenomena of 
intuition — namely, a consciousness of their relation to 
each other. The mere presence of an object affecting the 
organ of sight does not in itself imply that any other 
object accompanies or has preceded it ; but the recogni- 
tion of it as this object rather than that^ does so. Con- 
ception, whether intuitive or symbolical (for the latter is 
but the substitute for the former), thus implies the cog- 
nition of objects under separate notions ; and this cogni- 
tion constitutes the common or formal feature of the act 
of conceiving, being unaffected by any diversity in the 
nature of the objects conceived. To ascertain the Laws 
of Conception, we must therefore ask what this cognition 
of objects in all cases supposes : in other words, what 
are the relations implied in the knowledge of an object 
as such. In the first place, the object is discerned, or 
separated from all others ; and this separation implies 
two relations, identity and diversity. The consciousness 
of identity is at the same time the consciousness of dif- 
ference : I discern a thing by knowing it as what it is, 
and by distinguishing it from what it is not. In the 
second place, the cognisance of this relation between 
objects implies also their mutual relation to a common 



PSYCHOLOGY. 209 

consciousness. I am conscious of the distinction of one 
thing from another, by including both as modes of one 
continuous conscious existence. Without this, memory 
would be impossible, and without memory there could be 
no comparison. We have thus the three forms of Unity, 
Plurality, and Totality, manifested as the necessary 
relations with which the mind, in the act of conception, 
invests the materials furnished by intuition. To con- 
ceive any object A as such, I must distinguish it from 
all that is not A, and I must regard A and not-A as 
constituting between them the universe of my conscious- 
ness. These requirements are expressed by the three 
laws of Identity, Contradiction, and Excluded Middle, 
which may thus be regarded as the universal or formal 
conditions of every act of conception as such, in contra- 
distinction from the special or material conditions which 
are necessary to the conception of this or that particular 
class of objects only. 

From the above exhibition of the laws and forms of 
thought in general, as manifested in the act of concep- 
tion, it will be easy to deduce, in a somewhat amended 
enumeration, those special forms which have been treated 
by logical writers as distinctive of the concept proper .* 
The concept is necessarily conceived as one, as one of 

* See Kant, Logik, sect. 2. Fries, System der Logik, sect. 20. The 
former places the form of a concept in its universality ; the latter adopts 
the same view, subdividing universality into extension and comprehen- 
sion. 

P 



210 METAPHYSICS. 

many, and as constituting with the many an universe of 
the conceivable. From the last of these three conditions 
it follows, that the concept must possess a generic or 
universal feature, by which it is characterised as a con- 
cept in general, or a member of the conceivable universe. 
From the second it follows, that it must also possess a 
differential or peculiar feature, by which it is distin- 
guished from all others. And from the first it follows, 
that these two features must be united into a single 
whole. Hence every concept, as such, must possess in 
some degree the attributes of distinctness, as having com- 
plex contents, capable of analysis into genus and differ- 
ence ; of clearness, as being by one portion of its contents 
distinguishable from other notions ; and of relation to a 
possible object of intuition, inasmuch as the unity of a 
complex notion depends, not on a mere juxtaposition of 
terms, but upon its being the representative of one 
object* These three forms may be otherwise denomi- 
nated (for the difference is merely verbal) comprehension, 
limitation, and extension. As having complex contents, 
every concept comprehends certain attributes ; as distin- 
guishable from others, it is limited by its specific differ- 
ence ; and, as representative of a class of possible objects, 

* Arist. Metaph vi. 12 : 'E7rt p.h yap rod dvdpwiros Kai XevKOP irdXXa 
fiiv £<TTiv, tirav fir] vrdpxv Qarkpy ddrepov, £v d£, 8rav virdpxv Kai irddr) tl 
rb VTTOKelfxevov 6 dvdpcoTros ' t6t€ yap £v ylyverai Kai £gtiv 6 Xevubs dvdpwTros. 
Ibid. vii. 6 : '0 5' bpca-fibs \6yos ecrlv ds oil ffwdeapLy Kaddirep ij I\ids, 
d\\d t<£ evbs elvai. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 211 

it has a certain field over which it is extended. The forms 
of the concept proper may thus be indifferently enu- 
merated, as Distinctness, Clearness, and Belation to an 
object ; or as Comprehension, Limitation, and Extension. 
We have thus exhibited the general laws of thought 
in their relation to those objects with reference to which 
the thinking act is usually distinguished as Conception. 
But though no conception is possible, except in confor- 
mity with these laws, it must not therefore be concluded 
that conception is possible in all cases in which they are 
not transgressed. An object may be inconceivable in 
two ways, — essentially or formally, because the attempt 
to conceive it involves a violation of the laws of thought ; 
and accidentally or materially, because of the absence of 
certain preliminary conditions, whose existence must be 
presupposed before thought comes into operation. By 
the laws of thought, a concept must have distinctive 
contents ; it must not comprehend two contradictory 
elements ; and it must be contained under one or the 
other of the contradictory notions which constitute the 
universe of thought. Where these conditions are not 
observed, the object is formally or essentially inconceiv- 
able. Thus pure Nothing, which has no contents, and 
also the indefinite notions indicated by the terms Being, 
Thing, Existence in general, which have no definite con- 
tents, are formally inconceivable, as violating the law of 
identity : They are not an A as distinguished from a not- 



212 METAPHYSICS. 

A. So, again, we are formally unable to conceive the 
same surface as both black and not-black, which involves 
a violation of the law of contradiction ; nor yet can we 
conceive it as neither one nor the other ; for this is pro- 
hibited by the law of excluded middle. But the acci- 
dental or material inconceivability of objects depends on 
other conditions. The materials of thought are furnished 
by the phenomena of the senses or of some other intui- 
tive faculty ; and hence, when the intuition is wanting, 
conception is impossible, as having no data upon which 
to operate. Thus, a blind man can form no conception 
of colours, and a deaf man can form no conception of 
sounds, — not because sounds and colours are in them- 
selves inconceivable, but because the preliminary intui- 
tion which should furnish the materials of the concep- 
tion is deficient. And so likewise any man, though in 
the full possession of his senses, is unable to form a con- 
ception of a colour which he has never seen, or of a 
sound which he has never heard, or of a savour which 
he has never tasted ; or, at least, he can form only such 
an imperfect conception as may be furnished by its sup- 
posed likeness to some object of his actual experience,— 
a conception necessarily defective, as not containing the 
specific difference which characterises the object as such, 
and which actual experience alone can furnish. Objects 
accidentally inconceivable may be divided into two 
classes : — those which are deficient in the matter of the 



PSYCHOLOGY. 213 

intuition, and those which are deficient in the form ; for 
it must be remembered that the form of intuition be- 
comes part of the matter of thought ; and that both 
these classes are therefore, so far as conception is con- 
cerned, inconceivable materially or accidentally. The 
form of intuition is to be found in the general conditions 
of space and time, which are common to all external or 
internal intuitions respectively, as such : the matter is 
to be found in the special affections of this or that mode 
of external or internal sense, by which one object is dis- 
tinguished from another. Upon the necessary relations 
of space and time are founded the two sciences of geo- 
metry and arithmetic ; and a notion which violates the 
principles of either of these may be classified as incon- 
ceivable from a defect in the form of intuition. Thus it 
is impossible to conceive a figure bounded by two straight 
lines, or an odd number which is the sum of two even 
ones ; because the two straight lines cannot be perceived 
or imagined as occupying such a position in space as is 
necessary before we can include them under the general 
concept of a figure ; and the two even numbers cannot 
occupy such a succession in time as is necessary to the 
formation of the concept of an odd number. These 
notions are not, as some writers have supposed,* logically 

* Among others may be mentioned Leibnitz, TModicCc, sort. ii. p. 
480, ed. Erdmann ; Stewart, Elements, part ii. ch. i. ; and Whatily, 
Loyic, appendix on Ambiguous Terms, v. Impossibility. 



214 METAPHYSICS. 

self-contradictory, and therefore formally inconceivable : 
they are not inadmissible in their general character as 
thoughts, but in their special character as thoughts about 
figures or numbers. In one respect they differ consider- 
ably from the other class of materially inconceivable 
objects, in which the impossibility arises only from a 
deficiency in actual experience of the matter of intui- 
tion, such as has been supposed in the case of an un- 
known colour or sound. The latter may become con- 
ceivable by a mere extension of experience, without any 
change in our bodily or mental constitution. The former, 
being dependent on the subjective conditions of intuition, 
could not become conceivable without a change in the 
constitution of our intuitive faculties. This difference 
will be more fully examined when we come to treat of 
the distinction between necessary and contingent truths. 
Before concluding this part of our subject, it will be 
necessary to say a few words on the controverted ques- 
tion of the processes usually regarded as subsidiary to 
conception, namely, Abstraction and Generalisation. The 
account usually given of these processes by writers on 
logic cannot be regarded as accurately exhibiting the 
psychological phenomena connected with the passage 
from intuition to thought ; and the question derives addi- 
tional interest from the controversy which has been 
raised by philosophers of eminence concerning the 
reality of the processes themselves. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 215 



The ordinary logical account is to the following 
effect : — "We examine, it is said, a number of individual 
objects, agreeing in some features and differing in others ; 
we abstract or separate the points in which they agree 
from those in which they differ ; and we generalise, or 
construct a common notion, represented by a common 
name, out of the features of similarity so separated from 

(the rest ; which common notion becomes thus indiffer- 
ently applicable to all the individuals from which it was 
derived. The process, as thus described, appears to pre- 
suppose the very act of conception to which it is repre- 
sented as giving rise. If, for example, I am to form a 
general notion of man by examining the individuals 

I Peter, James, and John, and by separating the accidents 
of complexion, stature, expression of countenance, etc., 
from the human form which is common to all, it is 
obvious that I must previously have formed general no- 
tions of the parts so separated from each other. Before 
I can say, this man has blue eyes and that man has 
black, and the colour of the eyes may therefore be set 
aside as accidental ; I must have discerned, by means 
of concepts, the eyes as such from other features, and 
the colours blue and black from other visible qualities. 
If these concepts, according to the above theory, are 
formed by means of a previous abstraction, the same 
difficulty is repeated. Conception supposes abstrac- 
tion, and abstraction again supposes conception, and 



216 METAPHYSICS. 

the explanation thus runs in a constantly recurring 
circle. 

The error of the theory consists in supposing that the 
individual is discerned as such before the universal. In 
the confused consciousness, if it can be called conscious- 
ness at all, which alone would be possible in an act of 
sensation unaccompanied by thought, we could not be 
said to discern either likenesses or differences. We should 
not be able to distinguish one individual from another, 
or to compare them together as like or unlike. As soon 
as thought is awakened, the general notion is perceived 
in and along with the individual which is discerned 
under it ' and it is impossible to distinguish an indivi- 
dual as such from others, without at the same time being 
conscious of the notion which that individual exempli- 
fies. Indeed, properly speaking, every collection of 
individual attributes is potentially the representative of 
a class ; for there is nothing in the attributes themselves 
to prevent their being exhibited by more than one 
object. In one sense, indeed, it might be said that our 
cognition of the class is prior to that of the individual. 
For, in the development of consciousness by the aid of 
language, resemblances are noticed earlier than differ- 
ences; and even the names distinctive of individuals 
are at first associated only with their generic features. 
Children, says Aristotle, at first call all men father, and 
all women mother, but afterwards they distinguish one 



PSYCHOLOGY. 217 

person from another * Ey the aid of language, our first 
abstractions are in fact given to us already made, as we 
learn to give the same name to various individuals pre- 
sented to us under slight and at first unnoticed circum- 
stances of distinction. The name is thus applied to dif- 
ferent objects long before we learn to analyse the grow- 
ing powers of speech and thought, to ask what we mean 
by each several instance of its application, and to correct 
and fix the signification of words at first used vaguely 
and obscurely. 

The nature of the general notion or concept itself has 
been no less a point of controversy among philosophers 
than the process by which it is formed. According to 
Locke, t the general idea of a triangle is an imperfect 
idea, " wherein some parts of several different and incon- 
sistent ideas are put together." As limited to no par- 
ticular kind of triangle, but including all, it must be 
"neither oblique nor rectangular, neither equilateral, 
equicrural, nor scalenon ; but all and none of these at 
once." The general idea, as thus described, Berkeley 
easily perceived to be self-contradictory, and the doctrine 
suicidal. " I have a faculty," he says, " of imagining or 
representing to myself the ideas of those particular 
things I have perceived, and of variously compounding 
and dividing them. I can imagine a man with two heads, 

* Phys. A use. i. 1. 
t Essay, b. iv. chap. vii. sec. 9. 



218 METAPHYSICS. 

or the upper parts of a man joined to the body of a horse. 
I can consider the hand, the eye, the nose, each by itself, 
abstracted or separated from the rest of the body. But 
then, whatever hand or eye I imagine, it must have some 
particular shape and colour. Likewise the idea of man 
that I frame to myself must be either of a white, or a 
black, or a tawny, a straight, or a crooked, a tall, or a 
low, or a middle-sized man. To be plain, I own myself 
able to abstract in one sense, as when I consider some 
particular parts or qualities separated from others, with 
which, though they are united in some objects, yet it is 
possible they may really exist without them. But I 
deny that I can abstract one from another, or conceive 
separately, those qualities which it is impossible should 
exist so separated ; or that I can frame a general notion 
by abstracting from particulars in the manner afore- 
said."* On these grounds, the bishop maintains that 
things, names, and notions, are in their own nature par- 
ticular, and are only rendered universal by the relation 
which they bear to the particulars represented by them. 
The remarks which have been made above, on the 
distinction between intuitive and symbolical knowledge, 
and on the office of language in promoting distinctness 
of intuition as well as of conception, may assist in plac- 
ing this controversy on a more satisfactory footing. The 
error of Locke, as Berkeley clearly perceived, consisted 

* Principles of Human Knowledge, Introduction, sec. 10. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 219 

in regarding abstraction as a positive act of thought, 
instead of the mere negation of thought Abstraction is 
nothing more than non-attention to certain parts of an 
object : we do not positively think of the triangle as 
neither equilateral, nor isosceles, nor scalene ; but we 
think of the figure as composed of three sides, without 
asking the question whether those sides are equal or 
unequal. On the other hand, Berkeley, in maintaining 
that all notions are in their own nature particular, has 
overlooked the fact, that thought, and, through thought, 
language, is necessary to distinguish the particular as 
particular, no less than the universal as universal ; and 
that we are thus enabled, both in intuitive and in sym- 
bolical cognition, to discern generic attributes, and to 
constitute them an object of conception, without being 
conscious of the particulars by which they are accom- 
panied. I see a man at a distance, and I know him to 
be a man ; here is intuition and conception combined. 
But I am not near enough to discern either his stature 
or his complexion ; and though, if my attention is called 
to the point, I cannot help admitting that he must be of 
a certain size and a certain colour ; yet the visible object 
presents neither the one nor the other ; and it is not 
necessary that my attention should be called to them at 
all. It is true that the visible object, as a surface, is 
coloured ; but this colour does not enter into my notion 
of the thing represented. The faint blue tint that 



220 METAPHYSICS. 

marks a distant object is not included in my concep- 
tion of the object as a man, and my sight is too feeble 
to enable me to supply any other. Here, then, is a dis- 
tinct cognition of generic attributes as such — attributes 
which are indeed perceived as existing in an individual, 
but which contain no distinctive feature by which the 
individual can be recognised as such. The abstraction 
becomes still greater when the conception is purely 
symbolical ; as we are thus enabled to think of the 
attributes without being at the moment conscious of 
their coexistence in any individual whatever. Berkeley 
mistakes the test of conception for the act of conception 
itself. Conception is not identical with imagination ; 
though the latter process is so far the test of the former, 
that nothing can be conceived as constituting a class, 
w r hich is absolutely and in its own nature incapable of 
being imagined as existing in an individual. 

The length to which our remarks have run on the 
subject of conception will enable us to be more brief in 
our treatment of the remaining operations of thought, 
which are nothing more than the same faculty of com- 
parison applied to different objects. 



OF JUDGMENT. 

Judgment, in the limited sense in which it is dis- 
tinguishable from consciousness in general, is an act of 



PSYCHOLOGY. 221 

comparison between two given concepts, as regards their 
relation to a common object. Omitting those judgments 
which involve merely the enumeration of the attributes 
comprehended in a concept (the analytical or explicative 
judgments of Kant), which may be more properly classi- 
fied as acts of conception ; and confining ourselves to 
those in which the contents of the given concepts are 
distinct from each other (the synthetical or ampliative 
judgments of Kant, we may distinguish the Form from 
the Matter of judgments, — the part contributed by the 
act of judging itself, from the pre-existing materials on 
which it operates, — as follows. The concepts being dis- 
tinct from each other in contents, their relation to a 
common object cannot be ascertained by any mere 
examination of those contents : this relation, therefore, 
as well as the concepts themselves, must be given prior 
to and out of the act of comparison. In other words, the 
relation between the two concepts must be given in an 
act of intuition, pure or empirical, imaginary or real, 
before we can decide by an act of judgment that such a 
relation does or does not exist. For example : in order 
to form the judgment " two straight lines cannot inclose 
a space," I must not only know the meaning of the 
terms employed, but I must also, by the aid of imagi- 
nation, construct a representation in my mind of two 
actual straight lines and their actual positions in space. 
I must perceive that these two straight lines are in- 



222 METAPHYSICS. 

capable of inclosing a space, before I pronounce the 
universal judgment concerning straight lines in general. 
Here the relation between the two concepts is presented 
in a pure or a priori intuition — i.e. in an intuition con- 
taining no adventitious element external to the mind 
itself. Again, in order to form the judgment " gold is 
heavy," supposing that my conception of gold does not 
in itself include the attribute of weight, I cannot, by 
merely thinking of gold as a hard, yellow, shining body, 
determine what effect it will produce when laid upon the 
hand. I must actually place an individual piece of gold 
upon my hand, and ascertain by experience the fact of 
its pressure. Here the relation between the two con- 
cepts is presented in a mixed or empirical intuition ; i.e. 
in an intuition caused by the presence of a body external 
to the mind itself. The examination of these constituent 
elements will enable us to distinguish between the 
matter and the form of thought as exhibited in the act 
of judgment. 

If I poise a piece of gold in my hand, in order to 
ascertain whether it is heavy, the presented phenomena 
belong to distinct acts of sensation. The evidence of 
sight attests the presence of a round, yellow, shining 
body ; the evidence of touch, or rather of muscular pres- 
sure, attests its weight. To unite these attributes, as 
belonging to one and the same thing, is an act, not of 
sensation, but of thought. The mere sensation aided by 



PSYCHOLOGY. 223 

the concepts, presents us with three things — the body 
which is seen, the pressure which is felt, and a certain 
temporal and local juxtaposition of the two. To com- 
bine the presented attributes as belonging to one thing ; 
to pronounce that it is the gold which is heavy, is an act 
of thought, constituting a judgment. Here, then, we 
have one form of judgment, expressed in the copula, 
" gold is heavy ;" this indicates the identification of two 
concepts as related to a common object ; an identifica- 
tion usually known as the quality of the judgment. 

The same is the case with the quantity of judgments. 
I see a number of balls lying on a table, and pronounce 
at once that they are all white ; I see another collection, 
and assert in like manner that some are white and some 
black. Here the senses, even when aided by the con- 
cepts in distinguishing the balls as such, yet present to 
us only individual objects This, this, and this are within 
their province ; but they know nothing of all or some. 
It is by an act of thought that the several individuals 
are regarded as constituting a whole, and a judgment 
pronounced concerning that whole or a portion of it. 

A third form of the judgment, as indeed of all think- 
ing, is limitation. In predicating one notion of another, 
I at the same time necessarily exclude everything to 
which that predicate is opposed, and thereby limit the 
subject to one alone of those contradictory determina- 
tions which make up the universe of thought. In as- 



224 METAPHYSICS. 

serting, for example, that gold is heavy, I as much 
exclude it from the class of imponderables as I include 
it within that of bodies possessing weight. The canon 
that predication is limitation is now, indeed, universally 
admitted as an axiom in philosophy ;* and the various 
metaphysical systems of modern Germany, since the 
days of Kant, may be briefly described as so many at- 
tempts to evade the consequences of this principle by 
constructing a philosophy of the unlimited on a basis 
independent of logical predication. 

These three forms of the judgment, like those of the 

* See, for example, among others, Fichte, Ueber den Grund unseres 
Glaubens an eine gottliche Weltregierung, p. 16 (Werke, v. p. 187) 
Gerichtliche Verantwortung, p. 47 ( Werke, v. p. 265) ; Bestimmung des 
Menschen ( Werke, ii. p. 304). Hegel, Logik, p. i. b. ii. chap. 2 ; p. ii 
chap. 2, Encyklopadie, sec. 28 ( Werlce, iv. p. 26 ; v. p. 70 ; vi. p. 64) 

+ Kant {Kritik der r. V. Transc. Anal. B. i. Abschn. 2 ; Logik 
sec. 20) admits four forms of the judgment, — quantity, quality, relation 
and modality. The two first have been admitted above. That of rela 
tion, under which head Kant classes the division of judgments into cate 
gorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive, is based on a very questionable 
position of the ordinary logic. If, as appears to be the case, hypothetical 
and disjunctive judgments, so far as they are judgments at all, are redu- 
cible to categoricals, relation, instead of being a special form of judgment, 
becomes a term equivalent to judgment in general. As regards moda- 
lity, it may perhaps be more accurately referred to the matter than to the 
form of the judgment. The only judgments necessary as thoughts are 
those in which the subject logically contains the predicate : the only judg- 
ments impossible as thoughts are those in which the one term contradicts 
the other. These, as analytical judgments, have been above classed 
under the head of conception. All other judgments, as thoughts, are 
contingent, and become necessary or impossible only as thoughts about 



PSYCHOLOGY. 231 

portion of our subject, however, it may be necessary to 
say a few words in defence of the character which 
throughout the preceding pages has been assigned to 
the general laws of thought; — that of identical judg- 
ments, in which the predicate expresses the same notion 
that is already given in the subject. The reader who 
remembers the contemptuous chapter of Locke on 
Trifling Propositions,* or the equally contemptuous ob- 
servations of Stewart on the Aristotelian Logic,t may be 
astonished to find these despised propositions elevated 
to the character of laws of mind, and placed at the head 
of all thought. In truth, however, the position thus 
assigned to them is not only justified by the analysis 
of the act of thought, but is a necessary consequence 
even of the doctrines of Locke himself. Supposing that 
the act of thinking is governed by general laws at all 
(and that it is so, is manifest from the inability to con- 
ceive absurdities), such laws can clearly impart nothing 
in the way of instruction or the discovery of new truths- 

of sufficient reason, and disjunctives on that of excluded middle. But 
Kant too hastily accepted the ordinary logical classification. If, as I 
believe to be the case, all hypothetical and disjunctive reasonings, so 
far as they are reasonings at all, may be reduced to the categorical 
form, it follows that all syllogisms will depend on the laws of identity and 
contradiction, and, in a subordinate manner, on that of excluded middle. 
The principle of sufficient reason, in its logical form, is, properly speak- 
ing, not a law of thought, but only a statement that all thought must 
be governed by some law or other. 

* Essay, b. iv. chap. viii. + Elements, part ii. chap. iii. 



232 METAPHYSICS. 

A new truth is in its very nature partial ; it is new 
only because it is partial — because it is the discovery of 
the particular attributes of some particular thing or class 
of things. In a psychological point of view, the deter- 
mination of the laws of thought (be their character as 
judgments what it may) is as much a new truth as any 
other, being the discovery of a particular fact in the con- 
stitution of the human mind. But when we consider the 
same laws logically, in their application to the products 
of thought, how is it possible for any new truth to be 
determined by them ? As general laws, they have no 
special relation to this object of thought rather than 
that ; and it is upon such special relations that the dis- 
covery of every new truth must depend. Material 
knowledge arises from the observation of differences ; 
the essential features of laws of thought must be ab- 
straction from all differences.* A necessary law of all 
thinking, which shall at the same time ascertain the 
definite properties of a definite class of things, is a con- 
tradiction in terms ; for it is optional, and therefore 
contingent, whether we shall apply our thoughts to that 
particular class of things or not. But if all men have 
been thinking, some on this thing, some on that, but all 
under one code of laws, what marvel if, when their 
attention is called to those laws, they should recognise 
them as what they have all along virtually acknow- 

* See Kant, LogiTc, Eintleitung, vii. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 233 

ledged. Herein lies at once the explanation and the 
justification of the so-called frivolity of principles 
of this kind. They can determine only the general 
attributes common to all objects of thought as such ; 
and, as every object of thought is such from the moment 
we are able to think of it at all, these attributes must con- 
stitute the very identical judgments which logic has been 
so much decried for offering. To this it may be added 
that Locke, who denies the existence of innate ideas, 
and maintains that man cannot by any power of thought 
invent or frame a new simple idea,* is the very last 
philosopher who should have condemned the laws of 
thought as conveying no instruction. For if the prin- 
ciples of pure thought are competent to add anything to 
the matter already given, the act of thought can in so 
far invent or frame a new idea ; and this brings us back 
of necessity to the theory of innate ideas. If, on the 
other hand, the reflective faculty can only modify the 
materials already given to it, it follows that identical 
judgments are not mere verbal frivolities, but funda- 
mental laws of the human mind. 

OF THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS.t 

The laws of thought, properly so called, indicate the 

* Essay, b. i. chaps, ii. iii. iv. ; b. ii. chap. ii. 

t For the history of the doctrine of mental association, on which onr 
limits will not allow us to enter, the reader is referred once for all to the 



234 METAPHYSICS. 

necessary conditions under which one thought suggests 
another, as involved in it cb priori, and in its own nature, 
irrespectively of the particular experience of individual 
thinkers. These conditions may be reduced to the two 
relations of Identity and Contradiction ; and the prin- 
ciples in which these relations are expressed may be called 
necessary or a priori Laws of thought as thought. We 
have now to consider another connection, by virtue of 
which one thought accidentally suggests another, as as- 
sociated with it in the past experience of this or that 
individual thinker. The conditions under which this 
suggestion most frequently takes place may be exhibited 
as the general conditions of the phenomenon usually 
known as the Association of Ideas ; and the laws in 
which these conditions are expressed may be called con- 
tingent or empirical Laws of Thought in its accidental 
relations. The phrase association of ideas seems to be 
now so completely established in philosophical lan- 
guage, that it is hardly possible to put it aside in favour 
of a more accurate expression ; but in retaining it, we 
must, to avoid misapprehension, point out that it is 
in many respects defective. In the first place, the term 

admirable note of Sir "William Hamilton, Keid's Works, p. 889. The 
illustrious writer has triumphantly vindicated the claims of Aristotle to 
be regarded as the earliest, and, even to this day, the most accurate and 
complete expositor of the whole theory, and has supplied some interest- 
ing facts in its later history from authors almost unknown to ordinary 
readers. 






PSYCHOLOGY. 225 

concept, may be regarded as peciaJ D -uiifestations of 
the three conditions of tho- -unity, plu- 

rality, and totality. A idgment possesses 

quality, exhibited in copula, ty as a connect- 

ing-link, it is co r > til jingle act of thought: as 

one out of many possible judgment?, it is limited by its 
predicate ; ind as )osed of parts, it represents 

an object of thought* which, whether it be one individual 
or ir Lf the several attributes indi- 

I his relation to an object is ex- 
tity of the judgment, whereby one, 
some, or all of he members of a class are pointed out 
possessing various attributes and combin- 
i uto a whole, 
three highest laws of thought are likewise opera- 
in the act of judging, as in that of conceiving, 
.nis may be shown by ascertaining what are the uni- 
versal conditions under which the judgment, as a thought, 
is possible. Of course we have nothing to do with the 
material conditions under wdiich this or that judgment 
is possible as a fact. The latter conditions are special, 
not general, and apply to this or that particular judg- 
ment in its relation to its objects ; not to all possible 
judgments in their relation to the thinking subject. As 

this or that particular object. It is not logic nor metaphysics, but geo- 
metry, which tells us that the angles of a triangle must be equal to 
two right angles. 

Q 



226 METAPHYSICS. 

far as the laws of thought are concerned, it is indifferent 
whether we assert that the earth goes round the sun, or 
the sun round the earth ; the latter proposition being 
logically as valid as the former, however incompatible 
with the facts of astronomy. The universal conditions 
of the possibility of any judgment as a thought may be 
ascertained by the following question : — Given any con- 
cept A, under what conditions may another concept B 
be predicable of it ? The particular objects signified by 
A and B are supposed to be unknown ; the question of 
the logical validity of the thought being thus kept free 
from all admixture of material elements. In the first 
place, the concept B must have definite contents : it is 
to be a predicate limiting A. It is therefore a portion, 
and a portion only, of the universe of possible concepts 
distinct from A. This is expressed by the law of Ex- 
cluded Middle : " Every concept distinct from A is either 
B or not-B." In the second place, the concept B must 
contain no attribute logically incompatible with A. This 
is expressed by the law of Contradiction. In the third 
place, the concepts A and B, when united in a judgment, 
must be regarded as representing one and the same ob- 
ject : that which is A is also B. This is expressed by 
the law of Identity. A in becoming B remains identical 
with itself. This apparent paradox of identity in diver- 
sity constituted one of the earliest puzzles in metaphysics, 
and gave rise to a scepticism which, refusing to admit 



PSYCHOLOGY. 227 

without explanation the laws of thought themselves, 
consistently denied the possibility of uniting two notions 
in a judgment.* Whether the doubt thus suggested can 
be satisfied by Ontology, is a question which cannot be 
considered at present. In a psychological point of view 
it is sufficient to say that such is the form which thought 
necessarily assumes. The office of Psychology is to 
exhibit the laws of thought as they actually exist : it 
cannot undertake to vindicate them, or to explain why 
the human mind is constituted as it is. 

OF KEASONING. 

The third operation of thought, Eeasoning, is likewise 
an act of comparison between two concepts ; and only 
differs from judgment in that the two concepts are not 
compared together directly in themselves, but indirectly 
by means of their mutual relation to a third. As the 
concept furnishes the materials for the act of judging, so 

* Plato, Theat. p. 201: 'E7U) yap ad iddnovv aKoveiv tivwp 8ti ra p.h 
irp&Ta olovirepd aroix^a, ii- &i> r/yctels re o~vyKelp.eda Kal raXXa, Xbyov ovk 
Zxot. ' avrb yap Kad' avrb inavTOv 6vop.a<jai p.6i>ov etrj, irpocenvdv 5e ovdh 
&XXo bvvarbv, o#0' ws taruv oW ws ovk £<jtlv. Sophist, p. 251 : Ei)0i>s 
yap avTiXapto-dai iravrl irpbx^i-pov Cos abvvarov ra re iroXXa £v Kal rb £v 
iroXXa elvai, Kal 8rj irov x^povaiv ovk i&vres ayadbv Xtyetv 8.v9pu)TroP, dXXb, 
rb p.h ayadbv ayadbv, rbv 5e dvdpwirov &vdpwKov. Arist. Met a ph. vi. 29 : 
Aid ' AvTiadtitrjs (fero evrjdus pir)8h d£iwj> Xeyeadai ttXtju t($ oiKeiu Xbyy 2i> 
i<t> evbs. Siniplicius in Arist. Phys. f. 20 (Scholia od. liramlis, p. 330) : 
01 5e iK tt)s 'EperpLas ovtoj ttjv anoplav icpofirjdTjo-av ws Xtyeiv firjbh Kara 
ixrjdevbs KaT-qyopeTaOat, d\\' avrb /ca0' avrb %KasTov XiyeaOai, olou 6 
&.vdp(jmos dvdpuTTos Kal rb XevKbp XevKov (Cf. Zeller, ritilosophie dcr 
Griechen, ii. p. 115). 



228 METAPHYSICS. 

the judgment furnishes the materials for the act of 
reasoning. The Matter of the Syllogism thus appears in 
the several propositions of which it is composed, and 
which vary in every different instance ; its Form appears 
in the manner in which those propositions are, in the 
act of reasoning, connected together as premises and con- 
clusion. This connection consists in the recognition of 
a relation of identity or contradiction between the terms 
given in the antecedent and those connected by the 
reasoning act itself in the consequent. The forms and 
laws of reasoning may thus be ascertained by the fol- 
lowing question : — Given two judgments (no matter 
what may be their material signification), what rela- 
tions must exist between them, to warant us in inferring 
a third judgment as their consequent ? 

In the first place, the premises and the conclusion 
must stand to each other in the relation of condi- 
tion and conditioned. As the predicate of a judgment 
limits and determines the subject, so the premises of a 
syllogism must limit and determine the conclusion. 
Limitation is thus a form of reasoning, as of all think- 
ing, and exhibits, as has been shown in the case of 
judgment, the operation of the law of Excluded Middle. 
The conclusion, to be determined, must be one of two 
contradictory possibilities. In other words, the premises 
must be so related to each other as to necessitate some 
conclusion. If the connection between A and B, as 



PSYCHOLOGY. 229 

exhibited in the premises, be such that, as far as those 
premises are concerned, we are not necessitated to infer 
that A is either B or not-B, there is no determination of 
a conclusion, and consequently no reasoning. 

In the second place, since the concepts A and B are 
not compared together directly, but through the medium 
of a third, it is necessary that this third concept should 
be successively compared with each of the others. This 
comparison results in a relation either of identity or 
contradiction ; the subjects of the two concepts being 
pronounced identical whenever the premise is affirmative, 
and contradictory whenever it is negative ; and a simi- 
lar relation being consequently inferred to exist be- 
tween the concepts compared together in the conclu- 
sion. Hence the reasoning in all affirmative syllogisms 
is governed by the law of Identity, and in all negative 
syllogisms by that of Contradiction. Thus, when we 
reason " All C is (some) B ; all A is (some) C : there- 
fore all A is (some) B ; " the law which determines the 
conclusion is, that whatever is identical with a portion 
of C is identical with a portion of that which is identical 
with all C. Here is the Principle of Identity : " Every 
portion of a concept is identical with itself." Again, 
when we reason " No C is (any) B ; all A is (some) C : 
therefore no A is (any) B,"* the law which determines 

* In expressing the quantity of the predicate in OUT propositions, we 
have adopted the role laid down by Sir W. Hamilton as the basis of a 



230 METAPHYSICS. 

the conclusion is, that whatever is identical with a por- 
tion of C cannot be identical with that which is contra- 
dictory to all C. Here is the Principle of Contradiction : 
" No portion of a concept can contradict itself." The 
Forms which the syllogism exhibits, as exemplifying the 
above laws, are those of mood and figure, affirmative or 
negative, which show what relations of identity or con- 
tradiction in the premises of a syllogism may legiti- 
mately determine a similar relation in the conclusion. 
Here, again, we see a special exemplification of the three 
general forms of Unity, Plurality, and Totality ; the 
middle term, in its two-fold capacity of self-identity and 
double comparison, constituting the syllogism both a 
single thought and a whole composed of parts ; while 
the determination of a definite conclusion and the ex- 
clusion of others indicates its limited character as one 
thought out of many * 

The further examination of the syllogistic forms be- 
longs to the province of Logic. Before dismissing this 

new analytic of logical forms — viz. to state explicitly what is thought im- 
plicitly. The particular instances selected, however, only express the 
rules of the ordinary logic, which tell us that the predicate is distributed 
always in negative propositions, and never in affirmative ; i.e. that it 
is actually thought as universal in the one case and particular in the 
other. 

* In the Kantian logic, which adopts the ordinary classification of 
syllogisms, the categorical syllogisms are referred to a modified form of 
the laws of identity and contradiction, which Kant treats as one law ; 
while hypothetical syllogisms are regarded as dependent on the principle 









PSYCHOLOGY. 235 



association expresses only a very limited portion of the 
phenomena, — those, namely, in which the elements as- 
sociated together are consciously distinguished from 
each other, and equally correlative ; whereas in many of 
the most important phenomena of this class the com- 
bined elements are so completely fused together that 
the constituent ingredients can with difficulty, if at all, 
be detected in the compound ; and in others the relation 
is almost entirely on one side, — the first element sug- 
gesting the second far more strongly than the second 
suggests the first. In the second place, to speak of the 
associated objects as ideas naturally tends to limit the 
relation to modes of cognition, to the exclusion of de- 
sires and feelings.* On this account it would be better 
to describe the phenomena in question, in more general 
language, as those of related modes of consciousness, — a 
phrase which is indifferently applicable to equal and 
unequal correlatives, and to all the states of mind which 
are capable of connection among themselves and with 
each other. 

In qne sense, indeed, our whole consciousness may 
be said to be dependent, not indeed on the association, 
which term implies a previous separate existence of the 
objects associated, but on the coexistence or relation of 

* See the criticisms of Reid, Intellectual Powers, Essay iv. chap. 
iv. ; of Sir James Mackintosh, Dissertation (section vi. on Hartley) ; 
and of Sir William Hamilton, Eeid'a Works, \k ( J07. 



236 METAPHYSICS. 

ideas or modes of consciousness to each other. For 
consciousness is only possible as an apprehension of 
differences ; and this apprehension is only possible by 
the simultaneous cognition of the objects distinguished 
from each other. I can perceive, for example, a parti- 
cular colour only by its contrast to some other colour 
or to a surrounding darkness. I can be conscious of a 
state of pleasure or pain only by its contrast to some 
other mental state preceding it ; and this contrast 
implies a juxtaposition of the two states at the moment 
of the transition from one to the other. Conscious- 
ness is only realised under the condition of space or 
time ; and space and time can only be discerned by 
means of the relation between objects contiguous in the 
one or successive in the other. These general relations, 
as the conditions of all consciousness, have been already 
noticed in the preceding pages, and need not be again 
examined here. 

Nor yet is it necessary to dwell on those special 
relations which are necessary to the existence of any 
particular mode of consciousness as such, and do not 
merely regulate its subsequent reproduction. Our com- 
plex ideas, as they are called (and all ideas are in some 
degree complex), are instances of this class of relations. 
My perception of a horse, for example, is compounded 
of a certain colour, shape, and arrangement of parts, — 
all of which are simultaneously presented to the eye, and 



PSYCHOLOGY. 237 

form the conditions of my cognition of the horse as such. 
This, again, is not a case of suggestion or association, 
since none of the ideas thus given in combination can be 
regarded as the cause or antecedent condition of the rest. 
Nor, again, should we include under the head of 
association the logical consequence of one notion from 
another, — a consequence intrinsic and essential to the 
thoughts themselves, and not dependent on the expe- 
rience of a particular thinker. These consequences are 
all reducible to the relations of identity and contradic- 
tion, and imply, not the suggestion of one notion by 
another, but the analysis of a notion already given into 
the parts which it implicitly contains, and which are 
virtually given along with it. Under this class will 
come those relations which Sir William Hamilton has 
specified as logical or objective trains of thought, — in 
which "thoughts, though denoted by a single and 
separate expression, implicitly contain a second ; which 
second the process of thinking explicates, but does not 
determine to succeed." * Such is the case with all terms 
which in their signification are essentially relative to 
each other. The thought of a parent is relative to that 
of a child ; that of a greater to a less ; that of a cause 
to an effect. But then the term 'parent, in itself, means 
parent of a child ; the term greater means greater than 
a less ; the term cause means cause of an effect. Hence, 

Iteid's Works, p. 911. 



238 METAPHYSICS. 

as Sir W. Hamilton observes, it is improper to say of such 
terms that they are associated or mutually suggestive, since 
the thought of both is already given in the thought of each. 
These being discarded, there remain to be considered 
those relations of thought which, in the language of Sir 
W. Hamilton, are distinguished as indicating a psycholo- 
gical or subjective consecution, — a connection, that is to 
say, established between two phenomena of conscious- 
ness, owning to some accidental juxtaposition in the mind 
of the person connecting them. Phenomena of this class 
belong entirely to the Eeproductive or Eepresentative 
Consciousness ; for, though the suggesting antecedent 
may be an intuition presented from without, the suggested 
consequent, not being given with it, is called up by the 
action of the mind itself ; and thus the connection be- 
tween the two is an act of Eepresentation or Thought. 
The phenomena of Association, in this limited sense, may 
be comprehended under two principal classes : — 1. Those 
of Direct Eemembrance or Memory, in which the occur- 
rence of any mode of consciousness at a certain time 
suggests the fact of the same mode having been experi- 
enced at a previous time. 2. Those of Indirect Eemem- 
brance or Eeminiscence, in which the occurrence of any 
mode of consciousness at a particular time suggests the 
recollection of a different mode of consciousness, which 
at some previous time was experienced along with it. 
Hence arise the two general laws distinguished by Sir 



PSYCHOLOGY. 239 

W. Hamilton* as those of Eepetition and Kedintegration ; 
namely, Thoughts coidentical in modification, hut differing 
in time, tend to suggest each other : and, Thoughts once co- 
identical in time, are, however different as mental modes, 
again suggestive of each other, and that in the mutual order 
which they originally held. The first of these laws must 
be extended to include not merely total identity of the 
mental modification, but also that partial identity which is 
the basis of resemblance or analogy. Thus, for example, 
I may see a man, and recognise him as the same person 
whom I met a few days ago. Here there is a complete 
identity of two mental modifications, differing only in 
point of time, as earlier and later. But again, I may see, 
not the man himself, but his portrait ; and this may re- 
mind me of the original. Here there is a partial identity 
of the mental modifications ; the man and the picture 
being in certain features the same, however different in 
other respects. Or again, the metaphorical use of the 
term man, as applied to the figures on a chess-board, or 
to the cairn on the top of a mountain, may suggest the 
object from which the metaphor was derived. Here, 
however little there may be of visible resemblance be- 

* Reid's Works, p. 912. The latter of these laws has been usually- 
regarded by modern philosophers as the sole general law of association. 
See, for example, Hobbes, Leviathan, chap. iii. ; Leibnitz, Nowceavx 
Essais, 1. ii. chap, xxxiii. ; Mill, Analysis of the Sumam Mind, chap. 
iii. The former law may perhaps have been hinted at by Aristotle, but 
its distinct recognition and enunciation are due to SirW. Hamilton. 



240 METAPHYSICS. 

tween the objects, there is still one point in which they 
are identical — -namely, that both are denoted by the same 
word.* The second law is of still wider application. 
Not only homogeneous modes of consciousness, — two 
cognitions, two feelings, two desires, — but heterogeneous 
modes, — a cognition and a feeling, or a feeling and a 
desire- which have at any past time been associated to- 
gether, — may on future occasions mutually suggest each 
other. The sight of a place may recall to mind an event 
which has taken place there, and the feeling of joy or 
sorrow which that event occasioned to ourselves.t The 

* In some cases the association may depend on mere identity of name, 
without any other point of similarity or analogy. Thus Alexander the 
Great may suggest Alexander the Coppersmith. On the influence of lan- 
guage as a principle of association, see Hobbes, Human Nature, chap. v. ; 
Stewart, Elements, chap. v. part i. sect. 2 ; Mill, Analysis of the Human- 
Mind, chap. iii. Not only identity of names, but even of letters, is noticed 
by Stewart, as in the case of ideas in poetry suggested by alliteration. 

+ This is beautifully described by Shelley in a passage from which 
we can only quote a small portion : — 

" You are not here ! the quaint witch Memory sees 
In vacant chairs your absent images, 
And points where once you sat, and now should be, 
But are not. — I demand if ever we 
Shall meet as then we met ; — and she replies, 
Veiling in awe her second- sighted eyes, — 
' I know the past alone — but summon home 
My sister Hope, she speaks of all to come.' 
But I, an old diviner, who know well 
Every false verse of that sweet oracle, 
Turned to the sad enchantress once again, 
And sought a respite from my gentle pain, 
In acting every passage o'er and o'er 
Of our communion." 



PSYCHOLOGY. 241 

sight of the surgeon who has performed a painful opera- 
tion upon us may recall vividly an image of the agony 
which we suffered at his hands, and create a feeling of 
dislike at his presence * The food which we have tasted 
during illness, or the syrup in which a bitter medicine 
was administered, may ever afterwards convey to the 
mind an impression, in some cases almost amounting to 
an actual repetition, of the suffering which we felt, or 
the bitterness which we tasted.t 

But the above laws, being the most universal prin- 
ciples of association in general, are not sufficient to 
account for the special instances included under each. 
They explain why certain associations of ideas may take 
place ; but they do not tell us why this particular asso- 
ciation actually takes place in preference to others of the 
same kind. Any two modes of consciousness which have 
once been coexistent in experience have a tendency to 
suggest one another ; but this does not explain why the 
tendency is realised in certain instances and not in others. 
To account for these special phenomena, we must have 
recourse to a third law, — that of Preference. Thoughts 
are suggested, not merely by force of the general subjective 
relation subsisting between themselves; they arc also suggested 
in proportion to the relation of interest [from whatcccr 

* See the anecdote narrated by Locke, Essay, b. ii. chap, xxxiii. 
sec. 14. 

f See the instance mentioned by Vives, quoted by Sir W. Hamilton, 
Reid's Works, p. 893. 

E 



242 METAPHYSICS. 

source) in which these stand to the individual mind* The 
grounds of this predominant interest may be of various 
kinds. Sometimes the frequent occurrence of certain 
experiences may impress the association which they 
convey indelibly on the mind, and serve to recall it on 
the slightest occasion. At other times the intensity of 
the feeling connected with the occurrence may atone for 
its comparative rarity, and an event which has occurred 
but once in a lifetime may haunt the memory incessantly 
during the remainder of our existence. In some in- 
stances, in which the repetition is frequent and the sug- 
gested consequent of greater practical importance than 
the antecedent which suggested it, the latter disappears 
entirely from the consciousness, and the result of asso- 
ciation becomes transformed apparently into that of im- 
mediate apprehension. A striking instance is furnished 
by those phenomena of the senses which have been 
already described under the name of Acquired Percep- 
tions ; such as the apprehension of the distance and unity 
of objects by the eye, in which the immediate and proper 
objects of sight, the rays in contact with the two retinas, 
have been dropped out of consciousness, and the distant 
luminous body is to all appearance directly visible. 
Something similar to this may be observed in less 
familiar instances, in which we are conscious of the 
existence of a train of suggested thoughts remotely con- 
* Sir W. Hamilton, Eeid's Works, p. 913. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 243 

nected with each other, but overlook the intermediate 
and less important links. Such, for example, is the often- 
quoted instance mentioned by Hobbes * " In a discourse 
of our present civil war, what could seem more imperti- 
nent than to ask, as one did, what was the value of a 
Eoman penny ? Yet the coherence to me was manifest 
enough. Tor the thought of the war introduced the 
thought of the delivering up the king to his enemies ; 
the thought of that brought in the thought of the deliver- 
ing up of Christ ; and that again the thought of the 
thirty pence which was the price of that treason." It is 
probable, as Stewart has remarked upon this passage, t 
that had the speaker himself been interrogated about the 
connection of his ideas, he would have found himself at 
first at a loss for an answer. 

The three above-mentioned laws, of repetition, redin- 
tegration, and preference, will, in many cases, act in 
combination with each other ; ideas, once associated by 
similarity, being afterwards further connected by the 
fact of that juxtaposition, and acquiring a preferential 
claim by the frequency of the recurrence. Thus the 
sight of the picture of a man may suggest the original ; 
and afterwards the thought of the man may suggest the 
thought of his picture, as having been seen at a former 
time in connection with it. Here the elements of simi- 
larity and diversity are combined together in the same 

* Lcviatlian, part L chap. iii. + Elements, part ii. chap. ii. 



244 METAPHYSICS. 

association, as identical modifications of thought at 
diverse times, and again as diverse modifications of 
thought at the same time.* To the two first laws may 
also be reduced the four heads of association enumer- 
ated by Aristotle — viz. Proximity in Time, Similarity, 
Contrast, and Coadjacence.t 

The phenomena of mental association, if in modern 
times they have been too much neglected by some 
philosophers, have unquestionably been exalted to an 
extravagant degree of importance by others. If Locke, 
on the one hand, appeals to this principle chiefly to ex- 
plain some extravagances and prejudices of individual 
minds, later writers have, on the other hand, made far 
more than sufficient amends, by attributing to the power 
of association results which it is utterly incapable of 
producing or explaining. According to Hartley and his 

* An ingenious, though quaint illustration of this is given by Cole- 
ridge, Biographia Literaria, chap. vii. : — "Seeing a mackerel, it may 
happen that I immediately think of gooseberries, because I at the same 
time ate mackerel with gooseberries as the sauce. The first syllable of 
the latter word being that which had coexisted with the image of the 
bird so called, I may then think of a goose. In the next moment the 
image of a swan may arise before me, though I had never seen the two 
birds together. In the first two instances, 1 am conscious that their 
coexistence in time was the circumstance that enabled me to recollect 
them ; and equally conscious am I that the latter was recalled to me by 
the joint operation of likeness and contrast. So it is with cause and 
effect ; so too with order." 

•f* See Sir W. Hamilton's note, Reid's Works, p. 899, where the classi- 
fication of Aristotle is examined and compared with those of Hume and 
others. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 24 

follower Priestley, " Not only all our intellectual plea- 
sures and pains, but all the phenomena of memory, 
imagination, volition, reasoning, and every other mental 
affection and operation, are only different modes or 
cases of the association of ideas ; so that nothing is 
requisite to make any man whatever he is, but a sen- 
tient principle, with this single property."* In a like 
spirit, Sir James Mackintosh, in language in which some 
allowance must perhaps be made for the rhetoric of a 
public lecture, affirmed that the law of association was 
the basis of all true psychology ; and that Hartley, by 
his exposition of this principle, stood in the same rela- 
tion to Hobbes as Newton to Kepler ; the law of asso- 
ciation being that to the mind which gravitation is to 
matter.f Condillac, a few years before Hartley, had 
testified to the same effect, asserting that all the opera- 
tions of the mind are engendered from perception alone, 
and that the investigation of this process was of more 
value than all the rules of the logicians.^ Accordingly, 

* See Priestley, Hartley's Theory, Introductory Essays, p. xxiv. 

+ Lecture delivered at Lincoln's Inn ; quoted by Coleridge, Biogra- 
phia Literaria, chap. v. In his dissertation, Sir James's judgment of 
Hartley is more discriminating. 

+ Orvjine des Connoissances Humaines, section seconde. This work 
was published about three years before Hartley's Observations on Mmi. 
The theory of the latter, however, seems to have been formed independ- 
ently, and is far more complete and elaborate, as regards association, 
than that of the former. Some remarks in comparison of the two will 
be found in Sir James Mackintosh's Dissertation, section vi. 



246 METAPHYSICS. 

in Hartley's theory, as well in that of Condillac, not 
only our desires and affections, and the phenomena of 
memory and imagination, hut even the universal laws of 
thought, and the necessary principles of mathematical 
reasoning, and the immutable judgments of the moral 
faculty, and the self-determinations of the will, are de- 
rived with equal readiness from this prolific law acting 
on the material furnished by the senses. Association 
in Psychology becomes, like the adverb in Grammar, 
entitled to the appellation of the universal recipient, in 
which is swallowed up every mode of consciousness, 
and every faculty of the mind.* That the foundation is 
not always able to bear the weight of superstructure 
placed upon it, may be suspected at the outset from the 
amount of transformation which, in the systems of 
Condillac and Hartley, the sensible materials have to 
undergo, during the process of association, and of asso- 
ciation only. Like "compound medicines," to use the 
simile of Hartley himself, "the several tastes and 
flavours of the separate ingredients are lost and over- 
powered by the complex one of the whole mass ; so 
that this has a taste and flavour of its own, which 
appears to be simple and original, and like that of a 
natural body."t Thus the sensation of bodily pain 

* " Adyerbium Stoici iravUKTfjv vocant ; nam omnia in se capit, quasi 
collata per satyram concessa sibi rerum varia potentate " (Charisii Ars 
Grammatica, lib. ii. De Adverbio). 

+ Hartley, Observations on- Man, prop. xii. cor. 1. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 247 

becomes by association the emotion of fear ; the pleasure 
of sucking, and other sensible enjoyments bestowed by 
the same person, become the affection of the child for 
its mother j and the restraint imposed upon actions by 
prohibition and punishment is gradually metamorphosed 
into the ideas of right, wrong, and obligation. The ad- 
vocates of this kind of mental chemistry appear to have 
overlooked the fact that ideas have not, like chemical 
substances, a distinct existence and properties of their 
own, but exist and operate only as modes of the con- 
scious mind. Consequently, the changes effected, even 
granting in all cases the assumed affiliation of conse- 
quent on antecedent, must be due to a transforming 
power or natural faculty of the mind itself, not to a 
mere working of sensible impressions in combination 
with each other. But this admission amounts to a con- 
fession that sensation is not the source of the derived 
ideas, but only furnishes the occasion on which the mind 
exercises a power of its own, thereby framing additional 
ideas, or elements of ideas, which sensation does not con- 
tain and cannot supply. To this it must be added, that 
the power of associating ideas at all implies a conscious- 
ness of their difference from, and mutual relation to, each 
other ; and that thus association presupposes thought, 
instead of thought being the offspring of association.* 

* In the above remarks we have considered Hartley's system only 
with reference to the doctrine of association, omitting the mechanical 



248 METAPHYSICS. 

But the failure of Hartley's theory is most conspicuous 
in reference to the phenomena which we have next to 
consider, — the existence, namely, in consciousness of 
necessary truths. 

OF NECESSARY TKUTHS. 

It is a fact of consciousness to which all experience 
bears witness, and which it is the duty of the philosopher 
to admit and account for, instead of disguising or muti- 
lating it to suit the demands of a system, that there are 
certain truths which, when once acquired, no matter 
how, it is impossible, by any effort of thought, to con- 
ceive as reversed or reversible. Such, to take the 
simplest instances, are the truths of arithmetic and 
geometry. By no possible effort of thought can we 
conceive that twice two can make any other number 
than four, or that two straight lines can inclose a space, 
or that the angles of a triangle can be greater or less 
than two right angles ; nor yet can we conceive it pos- 
sible that, by any future change in the constitution of 
things, even by an exertion of Omnipotence, these facts 
can hereafter become other than they are, or that they 
are otherwise in any remote part of the universe. It is 
this characteristic of a certain class of judgments which 

hypothesis of vibrations, on which that doctrine is founded. A valuable 
criticism of the whole theory will be found in Coleridge's Biographia 
Literaria, chaps, vi. and vii. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 249 

the theory of association altogether fails to explain ; for 
it does not appear in those instances in which, according 
to that theory, we ought to expect it. Probably no man, 
even of those acquainted with geometry, reads Euclid 
every day ; and many pass several days together with- 
out thinking of mathematical relations at alL Conse- 
quently, the conviction that day and night must suc- 
ceed one another once in every twenty-four hours, ought, 
as far as it depends on association, to be more fixed and 
certain than that the angles of a triangle are equal to 
two right angles, or that seventeen and eight make 
twenty-five. Whereas, in point of fact, while the two 
latter propositious are conceived as possessing an eternal 
and absolute necessity, which no exertion of power can 
change,* the former is regarded as one out of many pos- 
sible arrangements, which has no other necessity than 
the will of the Creator, which might be changed at any 
moment by an exertion of the same will that produced 
it, which does not hold good in other parts of the uni- 

* Le Clerc (Logica, p. ii. cap. iii.) enters into a defence of the 
canons of logic against certain theologians who maintained that the 
Divine power could make two contradictory judgments simultaneously- 
true. But even this intrepid assertion of apparent absurdity does not 
amount to maintaining that we can conceive such an exertion of power ■ 
and this is all with which, as psychologists, we are concerned. So 
Descartes maintained that mathematical relations are dependent on the 
will of God, while admitting that we cannot conceive them as capable 
of being other than they are. (See Responsio'ad Serins Objections*, and 
contra, Malebranche, Ilcdurchc, 8&M eclaircissement.) 



250 METAPHYSICS. 

verse, nor even in certain regions of our own globe. 
Again, on the theory of association, our conviction of the 
truth of mathematical propositions should be more cer- 
tain in proportion to the number of instances in which 
we have seen them verified. That two and two make 
four, or that two straight lines do not inclose a space, 
should be admitted at first with doubt and hesitation, 
and asserted with more confidence as our experience of 
its truth increases. Here, again, the fact is at variance 
with the theory. A single enunciation of an axiom, or 
a single demonstration of a theorem, in mathematics, is 
as valid as a thousand ; and the conviction once gained 
is gained with an absolute certainty which no subse- 
quent evidence can increase. 

The judgments which appear to possess this char- 
acter of absolute necessity in thought, which no theory 
of mere association can explain, may be classified under 
the following four heads. — 1. Logical Judgments, in 
which the predicate is identical with the whole or a part 
of the attributes comprehended in the subject ; as that 
every triangle must have three angles, that the sums of 
equal things must be themselves equal, or that all men 
must be animals. 2. Mathematical Judgments, which 
express a necessary relation between two distinct notions 
concerning quantity, continuous or discrete ; as that two 
straight lines cannot inclose a space, that the angles of 
every triangle must be equal to two right angles, or that 



PSYCHOLOGY. 251 

seven and five must make twelve. 3. Moral Judgments, 
which state the immutable obligation of certain laws of 
conduct, whether actually observed in practice or not ; 
as that ingratitude or treachery must at all times and 
in all persons .be worthy of condemnation. 4 Meta- 
physical Judgments, expressing an apparently necessary 
relation between the known and the unknown, between 
the sensible phenomenon and the supersensible reality ; 
as that every attribute belongs to some substance, and 
that every change is brought about by some cause. The 
necessity in all these four classes of judgments is essen- 
tially different from that manifestation of the laws of 
nature which is sometimes distinguished by the name 
of physical necessity. The laws of nature, if by nature 
is meant unconscious agents only, express nothing more 
than an observed fact in its highest generalisation ; and 
of that fact we can only say that it is so, and that it 
might have been otherwise. This is the case even with 
those phenomena whose relations may be exhibited by 
mathematical formulas ; for though the mathematical 
portion of the reasoning may have an a priori necessity, 
its application to the facts in question is empirical, and, 
as far as thought is concerned, contingent. Thus, that a 
body in motion, attracted by a force varying inversely as 
the square of the distance, will describe a conic section, 
is a matter of demonstration ; but that the earth is such 
a body, acted upon by a force of this description, is a 



252 METAPHYSICS. 

matter of fact, which might have been otherwise had 
the Creator been pleased so to appoint. Necessity is 
the result of law ; and law implies an agent whose 
working is regulated thereby* But it is a law only to 
that which works under it : to an observer, who sees the 
results of the law without being subject to its influence, 
it is no more than a fact of experience. The laws of 
nature may be a sufficient reason why certain pheno- 
mena must take place in a certain way ; but they furnish 
no reason at all why I must think so. As it is optional 
with me to study the phenomena in question, it is 
optional with me to become acquainted with their laws ; 
and I can become acquainted with them as facts only. 
To know a law as such, I must know it as an obligation 
binding upon myself as a thinker ; and this alone can 
give rise to a necessity of thought. When I speak of 
the alternations of day and night as consequent on a law 
of nature, I mean no more than that the alternations 
have invariably been observed to take place ; and when 
I resolve such alternations into the law of the earth's 
rotation, I mean only that the earth does revolve on her 
axis once in twenty-four hours. My belief in the con- 
tinuance of the observed order of natural phenomena 
may be perhaps explained by some law of my mental 

* " All things that are have some operation not violent or casual. 
That which doth assign unto each thing the kind, that which doth moder- 
ate the force and power, that which doth appoint the form and measure, 
of working, the same we term a law" (Hooker, E. P. i. 2). 



PSYCHOLOGY. 253 

constitution ; but, as thus explained, it is a law of mind 
and not of matter. 

Of the four classes of judgments above distinguished 
as necessary in thought, the first, or Logical Judgments, 
do not require much explanation. Any notion, how- 
ever, empirical in its origin, must, when once acquired, 
be analysed in accordance with the general laws of 
thought ; and the result will exhibit that formal neces- 
sity which implies no more than the harmony of a 
thought with itself. Judgments of this character, affir- 
mative and negative, are only particular instances of the 
two great laws of Identity and Contradiction, and have 
been already sufficiently explained in our previous 
remarks on the operations and laws of thought. Thus 
the axiom, that the sums of equal things are equal, may 
be expressed, representing the first pair of equals by A, 
and the second by B, in the form of the identical judg- 
ment, A + B = A + B. The analysis of a complex notion 
into its constituent parts, as in the assertion that all 
men are animals, or that every triangle has three angles, 
is only a special application of the identical judgment 
"A is A;" or, "any particular specimen of a class has 
the general attributes of the class to which it belongs." 

Mathematical Judgments may be divided into two 
kinds, — indemonstrable or axiomatic judgments, whose 
necessity is self-evident; and demonstrable judgments, 
whose necessity depends on some previous assumption. 



254 METAPHYSICS. 

The necessity of the latter is derived from that of the 
former, so that the indemonstrable judgments alone 
require a special examination. Under this class are 
comprehended the axioms of geometry, properly so 
called* — viz. the original assumptions concerning mag- 
nitudes in space as such, and the propositions belonging 
to the fundamental operations of arithmetic — addition 
and subtraction.! The necessity of these judgments 
results from the existence in the mind of the a priori 
forms of intuition — Space and Time. The axioms of 
geometry are self-evident statements concerning magni- 
tudes in space ; such as that two straight lines cannot 
inclose a space. Their self-evidence or necessity is to 
be explained by the circumstance that the presented in- 
tuition, as well as the representative thought, is derived 
from within, not from without. For geometrical propo- 
sitions are primarily necessary, not as truths relating to 
objects without the mind, but as thoughts relating to 

* Under this head are included the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth 
axioms, as they are called in the modern editions of Euclid {postulates 
is Euclid's own term), with several other geometrical assumptions em- 
ployed in the subsequent demonstrations, though not distinctly ex- 
pressed. The remaining axioms of the modern editions (the common 
notions of Euclid himself) are logical, not geometrical principles, and 
depend solely on the laws of thought. 

f " Though in some things, as in numbers, besides adding and sub- 
tracting, men name other operations, as multiplying and dividing, yet 
are they the same ; for multiplication is but adding together of things 
equal ; and division but subtracting of one thing as often as we can " 
(Hobbes, Leviathan, p. i. chap. 5). 



PSYCHOLOGY. 255 

objects within : their necessity, as regards real objects, 
is only secondary and hypothetical. If there exist any- 
where in the world two perfect straight lines, those lines 
cannot inclose a space ; but if such lines exist nowhere 
but in my imagination, it is equally true that I cannot 
think of them as invested with the contrary attribute. 
This necessity of thought is dependent on a correspond- 
ing necessity of intuition. The object of which pure 
geometry treats is not dependent on sensation, but sen- 
sation on it : it is a condition under which alone sensible 
experience is possible ; and therefore its characteristics 
must accompany all our thoughts concerning any pos- 
sible object of such experience ; for, however much we 
may abstract from the attributes of this or that parti- 
cular phenomenon of experience, we are clearly incom- 
petent to deprive it of those conditions under which 
alone, from the constitution of our minds, experience 
itself is possible. We can perceive only as we are per- 
mitted by the laws of our perceptive faculties, as we can 
think only in accordance with the laws of the under- 
standing. If, then, by a law of my perceptive faculty, 
I am compelled to regard all objects as existing in space, 
the attributes which are once presented to me as the 
properties of a given portion of space, such as the pair 
of straight lines now present to my sight or imagination, 
must necessarily be thought as existing in all space and 
at all times. For to imagine a portion of space in which 



256 METAPHYSICS. 

such properties are not found, would not be to imagine 
merely a different combination of sensible phenomena, 
such as continually takes place without any change in 
the laws of sensibility : — it would be to imagine myself 
as perceiving under other conditions than those to which, 
by a law of my being, I am subjected. But a condition, 
though potentially existing in the original constitution 
of the mind, is actually manifested only in conjunction 
with that of which it is the condition. Space, therefore, 
and its laws, are first made known to consciousness on 
the occasion of an actual phenomenon of sense. Hence 
the twofold character of geometrical principles : empiri- 
cal, as suggested in and through an act of experience ; 
necessary, as relating to the conditions under which 
alone such experience is possible to human faculties. 

Arithmetic is related to Time as Geometry to Space ; 
and the necessity of its propositions may be explained 
upon similar principles. The two sciences, however, 
present some important features of distinction. Most of 
the propositions of geometry are deductive : it contains 
very few axioms, properly so called, and its processes 
consist in the demonstration of a multitude of dependent 
propositions from the combination of these axioms with 
certain logical principles of thought in general. On the 
other hand, the fundamental operations of arithmetic, — 
addition and subtraction, — present to us a vast number 
of independent judgments, every one of which is derived 



PSYCHOLOGY. 257 

immediately from intuition, and cannot, by any reason- 
ing process, be deduced from any of the preceding ones.* 
Pure geometry cannot advance a step without demon- 
stration, and its processes are therefore all reducible to 
the syllogistic form. Pure arithmetic contains no demon- 
stration ; and it is only when its calculus is applied to 
the solution of particular problems that reasoning takes 
place, and the laws of the syllogism become applicable. 
It is not reasoning which tells us that two and two 
make four ; nor, when we have gained this proposition, 
can we in any way deduce from it that two and four 
make six. We must have recourse, in each separate 
case, to the senses or the imagination, and by counting 
up an individual succession corresponding to each term, 
intuitively perceive the resulting sum. The intuition 
thus serves nearly the same purpose as the figure in a 
geometrical demonstration ; with the exception that, ill 
the latter case, the construction is adopted to furnish 
premises to a proposed conclusion ; while in the former 
it gives us a judgment which we have no immediate in- 
tention of applying to any further use. 

The intuition in the case of arithmetic is furnished 
by the consciousness of successive states of our own 

•Subtraction may be demonstrated from addition, if all the results of 

the latter are supposed to be given, or wee versa ; though it is simpler to 
regard subtraction as an independent process of drntrnieraHoT^ as is done 
by Condillac, La/ngue desCalculs, chap. i. But no result of either can 
be derived from a preceding result of the same operation. 



258 METAPHYSICS. 

minds. Setting aside all other characteristics of those 
states, save that of their succession in time, we have the 
immediate consciousness of one, two, three, four, etc. A 
purely natural arithmetic would consist in carrying on 
this series, with no other relation between its members 
but that of succession, until the memory became unable 
to continue the process. The artifical methods by 
which calculation is facilitated and extended, such as 
that of a scale of notation, in which the series recom- 
mences after a certain number of members, vastly in- 
crease the utility of the calculus, but do not affect its 
psychological basis. To construct the science of arith- 
metic in all its essential features, it is only necessary 
that we should be conscious of a succession in time, 
and should be able to give names to the several mem- 
bers of the series ; and since in every act of conscious- 
ness we are subject to the condition of succession, it is 
impossible in any form of consciousness to represent 
to ourselves the facts of arithmetic as other than they 
are. 

The necessity of propositions in geometry and arith- 
metic is thus derived from their relation to the universal 
forms of intuition — Space and Time. We can suppose 
the possibility of beings existing whose consciousness 
has no relation to space or time at all. This is no more 
than to admit the possible existence of intelligent beings 
otherwise constituted than ourselves, and consequently 



PSYCHOLOGY. 259 

incomprehensible by us. But to suppose the existence of 
geometrical figures or arithmetical numbers such as 
those with which we are now acquainted, is to suppose 
the existence of space and time as we are now conscious 
of them, and therefore relatively to beings whose mental 
constitution is so far similar to our own. Such a sup- 
position necessarily carries with it all the mathematical 
relations in which space and time, as given to us, are 
necessarily thought. Tor mathematical judgments strictly 
relate only to objects of thought as existing in my mind, 
not to distinct realities existing in relation to my mind. 
They therefore imply no other existence than that of a 
thinking subject, modified in a certain manner. Destroy 
this subject, or change its modification, and we cannot 
say, as in other cases, that the object may possibly exist 
still without the subject, or may exist in a new relation 
to a new subject ; for the object exists only in and 
through that particular modification of the subject, and, 
on any other supposition, is annihilated altogether. Thus 
it is impossible to suppose that a triangle can, in relation 
to any intelligence whatever, have its angles greater or 
less than two right angles, or that two and two should not 
be equal to four ; though it is quite possible to suppose 
the existence of intelligent beings destitute of the idea of 
a triangle or of the number two. This is necessary matter 
in the strict sense of the term ; a relation which our 
minds are incapable of reversing, not merely positively, 



260 METAPHYSICS. 

in our own acts of thought, but also negatively, by sup- 
posing others who can do so. 

A somewhat similar consideration will explain the 
necessity of Moral Judgments also. The fact of duty, 
whether in conformity or not with an absolute standard 
of morality, is in each case intuitively presented to me 
as an act in relation to a law of whose obligation on 
myself I am immediately conscious. It thus essentially 
differs from the phenomena of external nature, whose 
laws I do not intuitively perceive, but only infer them 
from the observed recurrence of certain facts. The 
moral sense, like the intuitions of space and time, is thus 
an a priori condition of my mind, not determined by 
experience as it is, but determining beforehand what 
experience ought to be ; and, though manifested in 
consciousness on the occasion of experience, does not 
arise from experience as a fact, but is given by nature as 
a law, which, like other natural gifts, grows with our 
growth, and develops itself in a certain way, whatever 
may be the experience to which it is subjected. Its 
nature, like that of the tree, cannot be changed by the 
soil in which it is planted, though its growth may be 
advanced or stunted by this or other accidental cir- 
cumstances.* But the immediate consciousness of law 

* Arist. Eth. Nic. vi. 11. Aib Kal (pvaiKa doKei etvai ravra, Kal <pvo~ei 
acxpbs fiev ovdeis, yvdofirjv 5' ^X €LP KaL crvveaw Kal vovv. 'Zrjixelov 5' tin Kal 
rats i]\Lx,iais olbfxeda aicokovdeiv, Kal ijde i] -^Xt/cta vovv e%et Kal yvwfji,7]v, il\r 
tt)s 0^0-ews alrlas oiio"qs. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 2G1 

carries with it a consciousness of necessity and immuta- 
bility in relation to the agent who is subject to it. For 
to suppose the law reversed in relation to myself, to 
suppose that it can ever become my duty to do what it 
is now my duty to forbear, is to suppose my whole 
mental constitution to be reversed, my personality 
still remaining unchanged ; — a supposition which de- 
stroys itself; since my present mental constitution is 
included in the idea of my personality. Hence I cannot 
conceive myself as subjected to a different law of moral 
obligation from that of which I am conscious ; nor yet 
can I conceive other beings so subjected ; for I can only 
conceive their obligations at all by regarding their 
mental constitution in this respect as identical with my 
own. But I have no difficulty in supposing the existence 
of creatures who have no conception of duty at all 
(though even in this case I cannot distinctly conceive 
the nature of their consciousness) ; just as I can suppose 
the existence of creatures who have no conception of 
mathematical relations ; and such a supposition is 
indeed actually made with regard to the lower animals. 
This explanation is sufficient to account for the necessary 
character of morality, regarded as a subjective obligation 
of the personal conscience. Its objective character, as 
indicating a standard above conscience, belongs to another 
branch of metaphysical inquiry. 

The Principles of Substance and Causality likewise 



262 METAPHYSICS. 

depend for their necessity as thoughts on a previous 
necessity of intuition ; but, in relation to both, it is 
requisite to distinguish between the necessary thought 
itself and the accidental associations by which it is 
accompanied. As regards material substances, for ex- 
ample, what do we mean when we say that extension, 
figure, colour, hardness, etc., are the attributes of some- 
thing extended, figured, coloured, hard, etc.? Are we 
compelled to think that, besides the sensible qualities, 
where exists a distinct imperceptible thing to which 
those qualities belong ; or can the language which 
apparently conveys this meaning be explained in any 
other sense ? We are not now inquiring into the real 
existence of this supposed substratum ; which is a 
question of Ontology, not of Psychology : we are only 
asking, Do we, as a mental fact, really suppose it to 
exist : and, if so, how can that supposition be accounted 
for ? Are we, as a matter of fact, compelled to think 
that, besides the properties which we perceive by the 
senses, there exists also an insensible substratum, in 
which they inhere, to use the simile of Coleridge,* like 
pins sticking in a pin-cushion and hiding it ? Conscious- 
ness surely tells us nothing of the kind ; but what it 
does tell us is sufficient to explain how its testimony 
has been thus perverted. In the first place, it tells us 
that no sensible quality can be perceived or conceived 

* Aids to Reflection, Conclusion. 






PSYCHOLOGY. 203 

by itself ; but that each is necessarily accompanied by 
an intellectual apprehension of its relation to space, as 
occupying it and contained in it. Colour cannot be 
perceived without extension ; nor extension without 
solidity ; and solidity is not a single attribute, but in- 
cludes in its comprehension the three special dimensions 
of length, breadth, and thickness. In the second place, 
it tells us that all sensitive perception is a relation 
between self and not-self ; that all sensible objects are 
apprehended as occupying space, and thus as distinct 
from the apprehending mind, whether distinct or not 
from the bodily organism. Every attribute is thus in- 
tuitively perceived, and consequently is also reflectively 
conceived, as accompanied by other attributes, and as 
constituting, in conjunction with those attributes, a non- 
ego or sensible thing : but of an insensible substratum 
consciousness tells us, and can tell us, nothing ; nor do 
we feel any necessity of believing in its existence, when 
the question is distinctly put before us, disentangled 
from its usual associations. 

But does not the use of language, it may be asked, 
imply a real, though perhaps a confused consciousness 
of something more than this ? Does not the name of 
each attribute separately denote relation, not merely to 
other attributes, but to a substance ? Does not extension 
imply a thing extended, and colour a thing coloured, not 
merely a coloured extension or an extended colour? 



264 METAPHYSICS. 

What, in short, is the difference denoted by the use of 
abstract and concrete terms, except that qualities are 
universally apprehended as really inhering in a subject, 
though logical]y distinguishable from it ? An explana- 
tion of this may, we think, be furnished, partly by a fact 
of the sensitive consciousness, and partly by an associa- 
tion derived from another source. The fact is to be 
found in the distinction which has been pointed out in 
the preceding pages between sensation and perception. 
Any material phenomenon may be regarded in two 
points of view : First, by itself, as a particular affection 
of the nervous organism, distinguishable as such from 
any other, aud present to consciousness as a mode of the 
sentient subject. Secondly, in conjunction with the 
apprehension of space, as extended, consisting of parts 
out of each other, and constituting one element of the 
complex phenomenon, which is conceived as an object. 
The former point of view is indicated by the abstract, the 
latter by the concrete term. In the former we contemplate 
the sensible affection alone, as a state of the ego, without 
attending to the necessary accompaniment of its relation 
to space. In the latter we contemplate it in the opposite 
relation, as forming one element of the material non-ego, 
or sensible object existing in space. The association 
which has contributed to a different interpretation of 
these terms is furnished by the opposite class of intuitions, 
those, namely, of internal preception or self-consciousness. 






PSYCHOLOGY. 265 

Modes of mind differ from modes of body, in being im- 
mediately given in relation to a common subject. While 
colour, and figure, and hardness, and other sensible 
qualities, are united together only by their coexistence 
in space, sensations, emotions, volitions, and other affec- 
tions of mind are manifested in consciousness as modes 
of existence of one and the same indivisible self, — the 
subject of all, and yet identical with none. The personal 
self is neither a mode of consciousness nor the aggregate 
of many modes, but a substance, distinct from all its 
affections, though discerned in consciousness in con- 
junction with them. This one presented substance, 
myself, is the basis of the other notions of substance 
which are thought representatively in relation to other 
phenomena* When I look at another man, I do not 
immediately perceive his consciousness ; but I can 
mediately and reflectively transfer to another that of 
which I am directly cognisant only in myself. Beyond 

* " Ex iis vero quse in ideis remm corporalium clara et distincta 
sunt, qusedam ab idea mei ipsius videor mutuari potuisse ; nenipe sub- 
stantium, durationem, numerum, et si quae alia sint ejusmodi " (Des- 
cartes, Mcditatio Tertia). From this was probably borrowed the 
similar remark of M. Royer-Collard (see Jouffroy's translation of Reid, 
vol. iv. p. 350) : — " Le moi est la seule unite qui nous soit donnee 
imniediatement par la nature ; nous ne la rencontrons dans aueune des 
choses que nos facultes observent. Mais l'entendement, qui La trouve 
en lui, la met hors delui par induction, et d'un certain nombre de choses 
coeiistautea il ores des unites artificielles." (See also Maine do Biran, 
(Ev/vres [nalitcs, iii. p. 346.) 



266 METAPHYSICS. 

the class of conscious beings I have only a negative 
idea of substantiality, except in so far as it is synonymous 
with the occupation of space* Some imperceptible 
bond of union between the phenomena of matter may 
exist, or it may not ; but if it does exist, it exists in a 
manner of which I can form no conception ; and if it 
does not exist, my faculties do not enable me to detect 
its absence. But the immediate knowledge, which con- 
sciousness gives me, of my own presented unity, is 
sufficient to explain the association which has led to its 
representation in other objects. 

The principle of Causality, as well as that of Sub- 
stance, has been disguised by associations which do not 
properly belong to it. In the first place, we must sepa- 
rate the special judgment from the general ; — the asser- 
tion that this particular event is dependent on this 
particular cause, from the assertion that every event is 
dependent on some cause. The belief in the uniformity 
of nature is not a necessary truth, however constantly 
guaranteed by our actual experience. We are not com- 
pelled to believe that, because A is ascertained to be the 

* " Una est cujusque substantias prsecipua proprietas, quse ipsius 
naturam essentiamque constituit, et ad quam alise omnes referuntur. 
Nempe extensio in longum, latum et profundum substantia corporese 
naturam constituit ; et cogitatio constituit naturam substantia; cogitantis. 
Nam omne aliud quod corpori tribui potest, extensionem prsesupponit, 
estque tan turn modus quidam rei extensre ; ut et omnia, quae in mente 
reperimus, sunt tantum diversi modi cogitandi " (Descartes, Principia, 
i. 53). 






PSYCHOLOGY. 2G 



cause of B at a particular time, whatever may be meant 
by that relation, A must therefore inevitably be the 
cause of B on all future occasions. This conviction may 
amount to a moral certainty ; we may act upon it with- 
out hesitation in the affairs of life ; but it has no such 
necessity that we are unable to conceive the contradic- 
tory* But to conceive it possible that B may at one 
time be caused by A and at another by C, and that A 
may at one time produce the effect B and at another D, 
the other circumstances being in all the cases exactly 
alike, is very different from conceiving it possible that B 
may exist without being produced by any cause, and 
that A may exist without producing any effect. In the 
second place, therefore, we must ask what is the exact 
meaning of the assertion, that every event must be pro- 
duced by some cause. In one sense, this judgment is 
unquestionably necessary. If cause be interpreted to 
mean no more than temporal antecedent, the assertion 
that every event must have a cause, implies only that 
no event can be conceived as the beginning of all exist- 
ence, but in every case we are compelled to think 

* Into the controversies concerning the origin of this belief it is un- 
necessary to cuter. Whether it be derived from association, or from an 
intuitive law of the mind, or from any other source — whether it he con- 
ceived as absolutely certain, so long as the present constitution of the 
world lasts or not — is immaterial At any rate, it is Dot conceived as a 
law which in no imaginable world, and by no possible exertion of power, 
could he otherwise than it is : and this is sufficient to exclude it from 
the class of necessary truths which we are now considering. 



268 METAPHYSICS. 

that it has been preceded by some other. This is the 
necessary consequence of the subjection of our intuitions 
to the law of Time. I can be conscious of an event only 
as taking place in time, and I can be conscious of time 
only in conjunction with a succession of events taking 
place in it. It is therefore impossible to conceive an 
absolutely first occurrence. The principle of Causality 
is thus derived from the intuition of Time, as that of 
Substance is from Space. To this necessary notion of 
some antecedent is afterwards united by association the 
empirical notion of the uniformity of nature ; and the 
conception of cause thus assumes the form in which 
Hume and Brown, from different points of view, both 
regard it ; namely, that of the invariable antecedent of 
a particular change. The law of time compels us to 
believe that there must he some antecedent phenomenon 
or aggregate of phenomena ; experience, and the antici- 
pations to which experience gives rise, tell us that this 
antecedent is invariable ; and the complex judgment is 
apparently invested with the absolute necessity which of 
right belongs to one of its ingredients only. 

But the causal judgment, as usually understood, 
appears to contain something more than the idea of 
antecedence. The cause is supposed, not merely to pre- 
cede the effect, but to have power to produce it. Whether 
the notion of invariable recurrence is included or not, it 
seems at least to be regarded as certain that, upon any 



PSYCHOLOGY. 209 

one occasion, the effect is so far completely dependent 
upon the cause that, the latter being given, the former 
cannot hut take place. The explanation of this impres- 
sion may, we think, be found in another association, 
derived from the personal causality manifested in voli- 
tion. In the exercise of an act of will, I am intuitively 
conscious of two tilings : — First, that I am acted upon, 
though not necessitated by, motives : secondly, that I 
act upon my own determinations as their producing 
cause. In the first relation I am conscious of a choice 
between two alternatives ; that is to say, that from 
certain given antecedent motives, a particular consequent 
may or may not follow, as I choose to determine. In 
the second relation I am conscious of an exercise of 
power ;* the final determination being called into exist- 
ence by an act of my own will. To this intuition may 
be traced the origin of the idea of power and of causa- 
tion, in a sense distinct from that of mere temporal 
antecedence. The power of which I am presentatively 
conscious in myself I transfer representatively to other 

* Those philosophers who derive the idea of causation exclusively 
from the succession of phenomena, are bound in consistency to regard 
the idea of power, as distinct from that of succession, as a pure delusion. 
And this is directly asserted by Hume, Inquiry contenting Human 
Understanding, see. 7; Human Nature, part iii. sec. 14; by Brown, 
Inquiry into Caiu» and Effect, p. IS ; and by James Mill, Anal\ 
the Hainan Mind, vol. ii. p. 250. Unfortunately, this theory does not 
inform us how, consistently with the laws of the imagination, such B 
delusion could have originated. 



270 METAPHYSICS. 

agents whom I suppose to be similarly constituted to 
myself ; and thus I regard other men as being, like my- 
self, the efficient causes of their own determinations, 
and, through their determinations, of their actions. But 
beyond the range of conscious beings, this representa- 
tion of cause, like the corresponding one of substance, is 
inadmissible. The connection between the antecedent 
motive and the consequent determination is regarded as 
contingent, so long as a voluntary exercise of power is 
interposed between the two. But where consciousness, 
and consequently volition, is excluded, I can no longer 
regard the relation between the antecedent and conse- 
quent phenomena as contingent. Contingence in a 
single succession* is only conceivable under the form of 
choice, by the interposition of the ego, the only given 
substance, between two successive phenomena. When 
this is excluded, the phenomena become coadjacent ; 
there is no choice, and consequently no conceivable 
contingence in the succession. The apparent necessity 
of the causal relation in every single instance is thus 

* It is necessary to specify in a single succession; as, in another 
sense, those phenomena may be called contingent which do not uni- 
formly, in various successions, follow from a given antecedent. But in 
this case the antecedent is not regarded as the cause of the consequent 
at all. But, in the case of any single occurrence, we are compelled to 
conceive that there is some antecedent or other on which it is depend- 
ent, and which being given, the occurrence could not but take place, 
unless it is the result of an act of free will. This conviction, with the 
exception, is the phenomenon to be explained. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 271 

explicable as a negative idea. It is not so much a posi- 
tive conception of necessity as an inability to conceive 
the opposite. But this inability does not depend on a 
law of thought. It is not an essential, but an accidental 
inconceivability, dependent, according to the classifica- 
tion made in a previous page,* on a defect in the matter 
of intuition. The contingency is in this case inconceiv- 
able, because contingency can only be conceived at all 
in the form in which alone it is presented to intuition 
— namely, as a conscious choice between two alterna- 
tives.! If this explanation of the apparent necessity of 

* See above, p. 211. 

*f* In this reduction of the apparent necessity of the causal judgment 
to an impotence caused by the absence of the data for thought, I must 
acknowledge my obligations to the corresponding portion of the theory 
of Sir W. Hamilton, Discussions, p. 609. This acknowledgment is the 
more necessary, inasmuch as, except in so far as regards the condition 
of relativity in time, I am compelled to dissent from the views of that 
eminent philosopher. His statement of the causal judgment, as an ina- 
bility to think that the complement of existence has been either increased 
or diminished, is open to various objections. In the first place, I am not 
conscious of any such inability. Existence is only conceivable under the 
conditions of plurality and difference, as existence in this or that parti- 
cular form ; not in the abstract, as pure existence or undeveloped poten- 
tiality. I have therefore no difficulty in conceiving that the amount of 
existence in the universe may at one time be represented by A, and at 
another by A + B. It is true that I cannot conceive nothing becoming 
something ; for I cannot conceive nothing per sc ; but neither, on the 
other hand, can I conceive A, or any part of A, becoming B, while A 
remains at the same time undiminished. But the result is perfectly 
conceivable, though the process is not so, and cannot on any hypothesis 
become so. In the second place, whether we represent the new appear- 



272 METAPHYSICS. 

the causal judgment be admissible, it will lead to some 
important consequences as regards the question of free- 
will and determinism. Bat this controversy belongs 
rather to Ontology than to Psychology, 

The above inquiry into the nature and origin of 
necessary truths will enable us to throw some light on 
the controverted question concerning the existence of 
innate ideas — a question which should be discussed, 
not where Locke placed it, at the beginning of mental 
philosophy, but at the end ; for its answer depends on 
an examination of the actual features of the phenomena 
of consciousness, and thus presupposes the facts of 
Psychology, instead of being presupposed by them. 
Setting aside, as irrelevant, those arguments which are 
little better than quibbles on the word innate, such as 
Locke's appeal to the consciousness of new-born child- 

ance as a change or as a creation, we are equally compelled to suppose a 
cause of its taking place. To say that B previously existed under 
the form of A, is not to explain the causal judgment ; for we have still 
to ask why A became B. In the third place, the theory fails to account 
for the origin of the idea of power, which, whether rightly or wrongly, all 
men instinctively attribute to the supposed cause. To represent it as a 
delusion is not sufficient : unless it can be shown how, consistently with 
the limits of thought, such a delusion could have originated. I regret, 
however, that Mr. Calderwood, with some of whose criticisms I concur, 
should have charged the above theory with pantheism. If ever there 
was a philosopher whose writings from first to last are utterly antago- 
nistic to every form of pantheism, it is Sir William Hamilton. Pan- 
theistic his theory certainly is not, for it represents the pantheistic 
hypothesis as the result of a mere impotence of thought, exalting its 
own inability to think into the measure of all possible existence. 



PSYCHOLOGY. 273 

ren the real point to be determined is this : — Are 
there any modes of human consciousness which are 
derived, not from the accidental experience of the indi- 
vidual man, but from the essential constitution of the 
human mind in general, and which thus naturally and 
necessarily grow up in all men, whatever may be the 
varieties of their several experiences?* The previous 
analysis of consciousness will furnish an answer to this 
question. Every phenomenon of consciousness consists 
of two elements — a matter, derived from experience; 
and a form, dependent on the original constitution of 
the mind. But the matter and the form are given in 
conjunction, and require an effort of analysis, aided by 
language, to separate them. This analysis may or may 
not be performed by this or that man, according to the 
circumstances in which he is placed. The forms of 
consciousness in general, and of its several modes — 
personality, space, time, unity, plurality, totality — may 
or may not be represented by the mind in their abstract 

* " Innate," says Lord Shaftesbury, "is a word he (Locke) poorly 
plays upon : the right word, though less used, is connatural. For what 
has birth, or progress of the foetus out of the womb to do in this 
The question is not about the time the ideas entered, but whether the 
constitution of a man be such, that, being adult or grows up, at such or 
such a time, sooner or later (no matter when), the ideas of order, admi- 
nistration, and a God, will not infallibly, inevitably, necessarily grow up 
in him." The latter part of the criticism is not decisive ; for Locke 
cites the adult savage to show that these ideas do not necessarily grow 
up. The true answer is, that experience itself is partly innate. 

T 



274 METAPHYSICS. 

character, as ideas or notions embodied in language ; 
and the necessary truths based upon them may or may 
not be consciously discerned in the same character. 
A savage may never have contemplated the notions, one, 
two, three, four, etc., in the abstract : he may not know- 
as an universal truth that two and two make four. But 
he knows the difference between a man and a tree, and 
he knows the difference between one man and many ; 
and his knowledge contains the same ideas in the con- 
crete. He embraces various sensible phenomena under 
the single notion of a man, though he has never asked 
himself the abstract question, How can the one be many 
and the many one ? Locke is, therefore, in one sense, 
right in denying the existence of innate ideas ; for no 
idea can be formed independently of experience, and no 
idea need consciously be separated from the empirical 
accompaniments with which it is first manifested in 
consciousness. But precisely in the same sense, we 
may deny the existence of ideas of sensation ; for sense 
alone could distinguish no two ideas from each other, 
without the co-operation of the understanding, which 
invests the materials furnished by sensation with certain 
universal and necessary forms. Instead of attempting 
to classify the actual phenomena of consciousness under 
one or the other head, — instead of saying that certain 
ideas are wholly empirical and certain others wholly 
innate, — we should rather say that every phenomenon 



PSYCHOLOGY. 275 

of consciousness contains an adventitious and a native 
element ; and that, without the union of these two, no 
consciousness is possible. The criterion of universality 
and necessity marks the native or a priori element ; 
but this criterion cannot be applied to the complex phe- 
nomena of any complete act of consciousness, but only 
to the element, when separated by an act of analysis, 
and embodied in that symbolical form which is not 
consciousness itself, but a substitute for it. 

Cognate to this is another question of far greater 
importance : — What are the Limits of Thought ? Is the 
mind capable of transcending the boundaries of all 
possible experience : and is such a power manifested 
by its possession of necessary truths ? for necessity is 
not the result of experience. Experience tells us ivhat 
is, but not what must be. Here, again, we must distin- 
guish between the complete facts of consciousness and 
the several elements which are logically distinguishable 
from each other. If by experience is meant all that is 
presented in any mode of intuition, matter and form 
included ; and if the question is understood to mean, 
Can we contemplate in thought any object which has 
never been presented as an element in any mode of 
intuition ? the answer must undoubtedly be given in 
the negative. But experience in this sense contains a 
necessary as well as a contingent — a formal as well as a 
material element. Either of these may be contemplated 



276 METAPHYSICS. 

in thought, apart from the other ; and either may be 
contemplated in relations in which experience has never 
presented it. We have never seen a straight line, 
except as part of a surface ; nor a surface, except as 
composed of some material, such as wood, or slate, or 
paper. But when thought, assisted by language, has 
enabled us to distinguish these concomitant phenomena 
from each other, we may reproduce in imagination the 
straight line as a modification of pure space, and con- 
template its necessary relations in that character. 
Thought is so far dependent on experience, that where 
experience is impossible, thought is impossible likewise ; 
it is so far independent of experience, that it can con- 
template apart from each other the native form and the 
adventitious matter, which experience always presents 
in conjunction. 

" The dominion of man," says Locke, " in this little 
world of his own understanding, is much-what the same 
as it is in the great world of visible things ; wherein 
his power, however managed by art and skill, reaches 
no further than to compound and divide the materials 
that are made to his hand ; but can do nothing towards 
the making the least particle af new matter, or destroy- 
ing one atom of what is already in being. The same 
inability will every one find in himself, who shall go 
about to fashion in his understanding any simple idea, 
not received in by his senses from external objects, or 



PSYCHOLOGY. 277 

by reflection from the operations of his own mind about 
them."* The preceding remarks will show with what 
modifications this statement should be received. It is 
true, in so far as it asserts that nothing can be repre- 
sented in thought which has not, separately or in 
conjunction with other phenomena, been presented in 
intuition ; but it is incorrect, in so far as it overlooks 
the fact that intuition has a necessary element, derived 
from the constitution of the mind, as well as a contin- 
gent element, derived from the phenomena of sensation 
and reflection. 

But whether we regard the objects of consciousness 
as presented in intuition, or as represented in thought ; 
whether we look to the necessary or to the contingent 
elements of which they are composed ; there is one 
limitation which the very conception of Consciousness 
as a relation between a subject and an object, neces- 
sarily implies, and to which in all its modes it must 
inevitably submit. Nothing can be presented in intui- 
tion, or represented in thought, except as finite. So 
long as the relation between subject and object exists 
in consciousness, so long each must limit the other. 
The subject is distinct from the object, and the object 
from the subject, and neither can be the universe. Nay, 
the object itself can only exist, as such, under the con- 
ditions of limitation and difference : it can be discerned 

* Essay, h. ii. chap. ii. sec. 2. 



278 METAPHYSICS. 

only as one out of many ; as implying the existence of 
other things besides itself ; and hence, again, as a finite 
portion of the universe. The infinite cannot be an 
object of human consciousness at all ; and it appears to 
be so only by mistaking the negation of consciousness 
for consciousness itself.* The infinite, like the incon- 
ceivable, is a term which expresses only the negation of 
human thought : — nay, the two terms are, in fact, syno- 
nymous, for conception is limitation. But the limits of 
possible thought are not the limits of possible existence. 
The infinite may — nay, must — exist though we cannot 
conceive it as existing ; for the denial of its existence 
involves a contradiction, as well as the assertion of its 
conceivability. Hence we learn the important lesson, 
that the provinces of reason and faith are not coexten- 
sive ; that it is a duty, enjoined by reason itself, to 
believe in what we cannot comprehend. 

from the above examination of necessary truths, it 
may be shown that no matter of fact can be a matter of 
demonstration in the highest sense of the term. For it 
is essential to demonstration that its object should be 
such as we can construct from within, out of the forms 
inherent in our own mental constitution ; and it is 
essential to the existence of a fact, as such, that it 
should be presented to us from without. A fact, as 

* See on this point the admirable remarks of Sir W. Hamilton, 
Discussions, p. 12. 






PSYCHOLOGY. 279 



such, must exist independently of my thinking about 
it : an object of demonstration, as such, exists only in 
and by the act of conceiving it. This consideration is 
sufficient to explain the failure of all attempts to 
demonstrate, a priori, the being and attributes of God 
— a failure which should rather be a matter of rejoicing 
than of regret to the believer. If we can demonstrate 
the attributes of those objects only which we have con- 
structed for ourselves, it follows that a demonstrated 
God is a creature of the human imagination. Such a 
demonstration is not, indeed, incompatible with the real 
existence of the Deity ; as the demonstrations of geo- 
metry are not incompatible with the existence in nature 
of perfect geometrical bodies ; but it adds not one tittle 
to the evidence of his existence ; and it encumbers 
theology with arguments too pretentious not to provoke 
criticism, and too feeble to endure it. " Mischief," says 
Waterland, " is often done by pretending to strict and 
rigorous demonstrations, where we have no occasion 
for them, and where the subject is too sublime to go 
far in, with clear and distinct ideas. Such attempts 
serve only to make that become a matter of question, 
which before was unquestionable, while standing only on 
reasonable presumption or moral proof."* The triumph 
over a weak defence of a truth is too often regarded as a 

* Dissertation on the Argument a priori for proving the Existence of 
a First Cause [Works, vol. iii. p. 371). 



280 METAPHYSICS. 

triumph over the truth itself ; and we may therefore 
rejoice that theology, in the hands of its best exponents, 
has wisely abstained from resting its claims to belief on 
the evidence of rigid demonstration. 

Lastly, we may observe that the distinction which 
various schools of philosophy, under various names, 
have attempted to establish between the Understanding 
and the Eeason, as separate faculties of thought, is, on the 
above principles, unnecessary, and therefore untenable. 
TVTiether, with the ancients, we distinguish between vovg 
and d/dvoia, the intuitive and the discursive thought, the 
faculty of principles and the faculty of deduction from 
principles ; or, with the moderns, especially in Ger- 
many, between understanding, as the faculty of gene- 
ralisation from the intuitions of consciousness, and reason, 
as the faculty which endeavours, intuitively or discur- 
sively, to apprehend the supreme conditions on which 
consciousness itself depends ; we alike divide that 
which is one and indivisible, and attribute to the 
faculty of thought an operation which it never per- 
forms. The function of thought is in all cases the 
same — namely, to represent reflectively what is presented 
intuitively ; and the existence of necessary as well as 
contingent principles in thought, is to be explained, not 
by a double operation of the thinking faculty, but by 
the existence of a corresponding distinction between 
necessary and contingent facts in intuition. The hypo- 



PSYCHOLOGY. 281 

thesis of a faculty of reason distinct from understanding 
may indeed be necessary, as an assumption, to support 
the systems of those philosophers who aim at construct- 
ing a philosophy of the absolute and the infinite ; for 
intuition, and therefore thought, as described in the 
preceding pages, takes cognisance only of the relative 
and the finite. But this assumption, consistently car- 
ried out, involves the annihilation of consciousness itself. 
But the mention of the absolute and the infinite reminds 
us that we are entering on the domain of the second 
portion of Metaphysics — Ontology, or the Philosophy 
of Being. 




II. 



ONTOLOGY ; OR THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE 
REALITIES OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 

THE term Ontology, or the Philosophy of Being, has 
become, in the estimation of no inconsiderable class 
of critics, a mere synonym for barren and useless logo- 
machy. And it must be confessed that the manner in 
which this field of inquiry has been frequently culti- 
vated has gone far to explain, if not to justify, the con- 
tempt into which it has fallen. The philosophy which 
attempts to deduce a science of realities from the most 
abstract and general conception of Existence must, from 
the necessity of the case, deal with words, and not with 
things. It has been already observed, in the preceding- 
pages, that the human mind possesses no positive notion 
answering to the term existence or being in general ; and 
it follows that there can be no law of the human reason 
which can indicate any necessary results involved in 
such a notion, and no fact of human experience which can 
give rise to a corresponding intuition. Every existence 
which we can perceive is definite and particular, limited 
and related ; and every existence of which we can think 



284 METAPHYSICS. 

is definite and particular, limited and related likewise. 
It must therefore needs be that a science which starts 
from the assumption of Being in the abstract (which is 
not a conception, but an equivocal term, capable of rela- 
tion to many distinct conceptions), and attempts, by 
pure deduction and division, to reason down to the con- 
crete existences which alone are objects of positive 
thought, must end by delivering, not differences of 
things, but distinctions of words. And this must be 
admitted to be the case with the speculations of Onto- 
logy in much of their ancient and mediaeval, and in 
some stages also of their modern development. The 
science was divorced from Psychology ; and was there- 
fore destitute of facts, and compelled to supply their 
place by the signs of facts. Eeversing the law of all 
reasoning, that of proceeding from the known to the un- 
known, it endeavoured to arrive at the truths which are 
immediately known in consciousness by commencing 
with the unknown and unknowable beyond it. But, 
profitless as such attempts ever have been, and ever 
must be, there were not wanting circumstances in the 
history of philosophy calculated to invest them with an 
apparent importance, and to engage acute and subtle in- 
tellects in the hopeless investigation. The science of 
mathematics was almost completed, in the essential fea- 
tures of its pure and abstract character, as the science of 
the relations of number and magnitude, at a time when 



ONTOLOGY. 2S:> 

its most important applications to the explanation of the 
phenomena of the material world were bnt dimly con- 
ceived, and not at all executed. With the triumphs of 
this science — the earliest the clearest, the most rigorous 
in its reasonings, the most unassailable in its conclusions, 
before their eyes — the patriarchs of philosophy might 
be justified in believing that, in the law of intellectual 
progress, the abstract and rational must precede the con- 
crete and empirical, — that the necessary relations of 
things in general must be determined prior to the inves- 
tigation of the actual attributes of things in particular. 
But though the relation of mathematical to physical 
science presents, in some respects, an analogy to that 
between the rational and empirical philosophy of mind, 
the analogy unfortunately fails in the very feature that 
is most essential to scientific progress. 

OF DOGMATIC OR DEMONSTRATIVE METAPHYSICS. 

The demonstrations of geometry are due to the pos- 
session by that science of concrete as well as abstract 
axioms — of a priori intuitions of objects, as well as ana- 
lyses of notions. Had the geometer been confined to 
such general and abstract principles as, that the whole 
is greater than its part, or that the sums of equal things 
are equal, — principles which indicate merely the logical 
analysis of thoughts, not the geometrical intuition of 



286 METAPHYSICS. 

magnitudes ; — had he been debarred, as some theorists 
have wished to debar him, from the use of the axiom of 
parallel lines, and the assumption that two straight lines 
cannot inclose a space, and other similar principles, 
many of which are implied, though not expressed, in all 
geometrical reasonings,* — his science would have re- 
mained to the end of time a science of words only. 
Yet it is upon the model of the merely logical principles 
that the majority of deductive metaphysicians have 
framed their fundamental assumptions.t Definitions of 
Being in various senses of the term, and of the attributes 
coextensive with Being ; divisions and subdivisions, with 
explanations of each, and analyses of the contents of the 
several notions ; have constituted, for the most part, the 
entire apparatus of ontological reasoning — a reasoning 
which, being based entirely upon the logical conditions 
of thought, can attain to no other truth than that which 

* It is with reference to these axioms that Kant proposes, as preli- 
minary to all metaphysics, the question — " How are synthetical judg- 
ments a priori possible ? " For the general axioms are merely analytical 
judgments, in which the predicate contains nothing more than is already 
implied in the conception of the subject. The special axioms are the 
only ones in which an additional attribute is asserted of the subject ; 
and, consequently, the only ones that can be considered as in any sense 
a statement of real relations. 

+ " Etenim Euclides demonstrationes suas in principia ontologica re- 
solvit, quae instaraxiomatum absque probationesumit ; velutiquodtotum, 
sit majus qualibet sua parte, quod sequalia eidem tertio sint sequalia 
inter se " (Wolf, Ontologia, sec. 9). In the same passage these axioms 
are called " principia quse mathesis pura ex ontologia mutuatur." 



ONTOLOGY. 287 

is implied in the formal harmony of one thought with 
another, and the consequent consistent use of the lan- 
guage in which thoughts are expressed. And, accord- 
ingly, Ontology, thus treated, obtained the name, more 
suited to its performances than to its pretensions, of a 
lexicon of philosophical terms:''' It is manifest, however, 
that such a method involves, however little its professors 
may be aware of the fact, a virtual abandonment of the 
problem which Ontology undertakes to solve. That pro- 
blem, as has been before observed, is to determine the 
relation which exists between the necessities of thought 
and the constitution of things. But a science which 
starts with a definition of Being in general, commences 
with one member only of this relation, the notion of 
being as conceived by us. To verify this conception, by 
showing that being as it corresponds to being as we 
conceive and define it, it is necessary that the concep- 
tion should be compared with something distinct from 
itself ; and the data for this comparison cannot be sup- 
plied by a merely logical development of one notion 
from another. 

In point of fact, the speculations of Demonstrative 
Ontology accomplished far less than this. The aiiah sis 
of a thought may be complete as a logical process, 
whether answering to reality or not, provided that its 
fundamental assumption represents at starting a posi- 

* Wolf, Onlolujlu, sec. 25. 



288 METAPHYSICS. 

tive and intelligible conception. But the fundamental 
assumption of Ontology, that of ens or being in general, 
represents nothing of the kind. What is being in gene- 
ral, apart from the special modes of being which are 
manifested in consciousness ? When, in the crucible of 
abstraction, self and not-self, the factors of consciousness, 
and every special modification of either, have evaporated, 
what remains as the residuum ? Absolute zero ; a mere 
word with no thought answering to it ; a being which is 
neither my being nor that of anything else, and which 
is therefore removed from all the conditions under which 
being is, or can be, made known to us. I have no con- 
ception of being in general which is not some being in 
particular ; and to assume that the various modes of 
being which consciousness reveals to us are but subor- 
dinate species of one and the same genus, is to assume a 
fact which consciousness does not testify, and which, if 
it can be proved at all, must be the conclusion, and not 
the premise, of the science that deals with it. Deduc- 
tive Ontology, by assuming Being as its starting-point, 
necessarily abandons thought to juggle with words * 

* The following summaries, extracted from the works of two eminent 
metaphysicians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, may en- 
able the reader to form some notion of the treatment of ontology in sys- 
tems prior to the criticism of Kant. The contents of Burgersdyk's 
Imtitutioncs Metaphysicoe are enumerated as follows : — " De natura 
metaphysicse — De communi entis notione — De eo quod est medium inter 
ens et nihil in genere — De privatione et denominatione externa — De 
ente rationis — De relatione — De modis entium — De principiis incom- 



ONTOLOGY. 289 



OF THE SUBDIVISIONS OF DOGMATIC METAPHYSICS. 

A M etaphysic of Being in general, even if successful 
in its aim, can only be regarded as a preparation for a 
more special philosophy. Even if it could solve its own 
problem, it would answer none of the important ques- 
tions which connect metaphysical inquiries with the in- 

plexis sive essentia et existentia — De principiis metaphysicae complexis 
— De entis affectionibus in genere — De imitate et multitudine in genere 
— Deunitate numerica et formali, de que principio individuationis — De 
imitate universali — De specibus et gradibus unitatis — De diversitate 
sive distinctione et convenientia — De oppositione — De ordine — De vni- 
tate et falsitate — De adjunctis veritatis — De bono et malo — De locali- 
tate, temporalitate et duratione — De toto et parte — De causa et causato 
in genere — De causa materiali — De causa formali — De causa efficiente — 
De fine — De subjecto et adjuncto — De eo quod est necessarium, impos- 
sible, contingens et possible — De potentia et actu — De perfeeto et imper- 
fecta), sive perfeetibili et perfectione. " The contents of Wolf's Ontologia 
are of a similar character : — Db NOTIONS ENTIS IN GENBBE ET PBOPBIB- 
TATiiius Qpm inui: oonsequuntttb — De principiis philosophioB pri 
De principio contradictionifl — De principio rationis sufficients — Dc 
essentia et existentia cutis, agnatisque nonnullis notionibus — De possi- 
biliet impossdbOi— De determinate et ^determinate — De notione cutis 
— De general Unix cutis affectiowibttS — De identitate et similitudine — De 
ente singulari et universali — De necessario et contingente — De qualitate 
etagnatis notionibus — De online, veritaie, et perfectione — Dr. BPBOIBUB 
EXTIUM ETEORUMADSF. [NVIOEM BJB8PEOTU — De €MU COm§KU 

sentia entis eompositi — De extentione, continuitate, spatio et tempore— 

De qualitatilms et magnitndine entis eompositi — De motu— / 

plid — De differentia entis simpliciset eompositi — Demodincationereram 

rtini sinipliiiuni — De finito et infinite— Dt rcspectu etUiwm ad se 

m — De dependentia reiuni carumque relatione — De CMUU D 
siguo. 

U 



290 METAPHYSICS. 

terests and destinies of man ; it would satisfy none of 
the yearnings which compel men to undertake the study 
of them. The ideas of God, of Freedom, and of Immor- 
tality, are too special to be elicited by the processes of 
general Ontology, except in the form of Pantheism, which 
disposes of them by annihilating them altogether. The 
idea of God becomes merged in that of the sum total of 
existence ; that of freedom is destroyed by representing 
this quasi-deity as the sole real agent ; that of immorta- 
lity is exchanged for an absorption of the phenomenal 
self into the real universe. To preserve the heir- 
looms of human reason intact, it was necessary for 
philosophy to descend from the region of pure ab- 
straction into one in which the conception of being 
could assume a more definite form. And here, at 
least, the investigations of the metaphysician had the 
advantage of starting from the testimony of conscious- 
ness. Every act of consciousness is given to us as a 
relation between self and not-self. These two elements, 
as mutually related, are necessarily viewed as modify- 
ing and limiting each other. But the consciousness of 
the relative and the limited suggests, by inevitable as- 
sociation, the notion of the absolute and the unlimited 
as its contrast. Hence arise the three fundamental 
ideas which underlie the whole fabric of ontological 
speculation — conditioned existence, manifested in the 
two relative and finite forms of the ego and the non-ego ; 



ONTOLOGY. 201 

td unconditioned existence, implied in the suggestion 

)f the absolute and infinite. The investigation of these 

leas has given rise to three branches of metaphysical 

)hilosophy — Eational Psychology, Eational Cosmology, 

id Eational Theology : — the ego being identified 
r ith the human soul, regarded as a substance distinct 
ram its phenomenal modifications ; * the non^ego with 

ie reality which manifests itself in the sensible world ; 

Ld the absolute or unconditioned with the Deity, f But, 
the prosecution of these inquiries, metaphysicians 
jommitted the same error which has been already no- 
iced as vitiating the theories of Being in general. They 
leserted the facts of consciousness, to take refuge in 
abstractions, of wdiich we are not, and cannot be con- 
scious. Let it be granted that every phenomenon im- 

* The character of rational psychology, as distinguished from empi- 
rical, is thus stated by Wolf : — " D efinio psycJwlogicam empiricam quod 
sit scientia stabiliendi principia per experientiam, unde ratio redditur 

eorum qu» in anima humana hunt In psychologia rational] ex 

unico animse humanaj conceptu derivamus h priori omnia quae eidem 
competere a posteriori observantur et ex quibusdam observatis dedu- 
cuntur" (Philosophic/, Rationalis Disc. Prcelim. sec. Ill, 112). Com- 
pare Herbart, AUgememe Mctaphysik, sec. 29. 

t These three objects of metaphysical inquiry — God, the World, and 
the Soul, — answer to Kant's three ideas of pure reason ; but he arrives 
at them in a different way ; namely, by regarding them as all alike inti- 
mations of the unconditioned, suggested by the three kindft of logical syl- 

logism ; — a derivation fanciful and extravagant, and which nothing but 
the profound genius of its author could have rescued from utter ab- 
surdity. 



292 METAPHYSICS. 

plies a corresponding reality ; that the phenomena of 
the ego indicate the existence of the human sonl ; and 
the phenomena of the non-ego, that of a substantial uni- 
verse ; and the relation between the two, that of a being 
who is beyond relation ; — still, in no fact of conscious- 
ness is the reality given apart from the phenomena 
which are related to it. The notions of an abstract Self, 
modified in no particular manner ; of an abstract World, 
isolated from the special phenomena of sense ; and of 
an abstract Deity, apart from those finite attributes 
by which he is manifested in relation to the finite con- 
sciousness of mankind, can be given in no phase of con- 
sciousness ; for if they were, the relation and succession 
which constitute consciousness would be annihilated. 
Whether these three metaphysical ideas all stand on the 
same footing within the domain of consciousnes itself, 
is a question which we shall have to ask hereafter ; but, 
assuming for the moment that they do, and assuming 
that in each there is a legitimate passage from the phe- 
nomena presented in consciousness to the ultimate reali- 
ties beyond, it is clearly begging the whole question, and 
anticipating the inquiry which philosophy has not yet 
commenced, to start with the abstract notions of such 
realities, as if the problem had been already solved, and 
the passage found. Hence, like Ontology in general, 
the three branches of Ontology, if deductively treated, 
will deal with words and not with things. Unable to 



ONTOLOGY. 293 

verify their fundamental assumptions by an appeal to 
the facts of consciousness, — unable even to determine 
whether those assumptions represent thought or the ne- 
gation of thought — they can but torture words under 
the name of analysing notions, and arrive at conclusions 
which indicate no more than a consistent use of lan- 
guage. Thought itself, in its bare and unmixed form, 
cannot be handled in any mental process. It must be 
contemplated either in the words which represent it, or 
in the things which it represents, or in the union of the 
two ; and the whole difference between reasoning and 
logomachy depends upon a single criterion : — Can the 
relations of language, which our process exhibits as re- 
presenting thought, be verified by an appeal to the facts 
of consciousness, of which thought itself is the represen- 
tative? Such an appeal is manifestly impossible to 
those who commence their inquiries by assuming an 
abstraction of which consciousness does not and cannot 
take cognisance. 

Thus, to illustrate our remarks by special instances, 
the aim of Eational Psychology is to frame definitions 
exhibiting the essential nature of the soul and its pro- 
perties, as realities conceived by the intellect, under- 
lying and implied by the phenomena presented in 
consciousness ; and to prove by a demonstrative process 
that the notions thus defined necessarily flow one from 
another. Psychology is thus raised from a science of 



294 METAPHYSICS. 

observation to one of demonstration ; and its objects are 
transformed from phenomena presented in experience to 
realities contemplated by the intellect. The soul, by 
virtue of its essential nature as a simple substance, is 
shown to possess, of necessity, certain attributes as 
rationally conceived and defined — such as sense, imagin- 
ation, intelligence, will, spirituality, indestructibility, 
and so forth ; and the same conclusions are even demon- 
strated of other spiritual natures which partake of the 
generic attributes of the human soul.* The weakness 
of the whole process is, that it tacitly postulates as its 
starting-point a principle which is neither evident in 
itself, nor such as can be made evident by any process 
of thought. It assumes, that is to say, a transcendental 
definition of the real nature of the soul, beyond and 
above those facts and relations which are manifested 

* The following table of the contents of Wolf's Psychologia Rationalis 
will exhibit a brief summary of this method : — " De anima in genere et 
facultati cognoscendi in specie — De natura et essentia animse — De facili- 
tate sentiendi, sive sensu — De imaginatione et memoria — De attentione 
et intellectu — De facultate appetendi — De appetitu sensitivo et aversa- 
tione sensitiva atque affectibus — De appetitu et aversatione rationali, 
seu de voluntate et noluntate — De commercio inter mentem et corpus — 
De systematis explicandi commercium inter mentem et corpus in genere 
— De systemate influxus physici — De systemate causarum occasiona- 
lium — De harmonia preestabilita — De variis animce attributes, spiritu in 
genere, et animabus brutorum — De spiritu in genere et spiritualitate 
animse in specie — De animse ortu, unione cum corpore, et immortalitate 
— De animabus brutorum." Compare Kant, Kr. der r. V. Trans. 
Dial, B. ii. H. 1. Hegel, Encykl. sec. 34. 



ONTOLOGY. 295 

in consciousness. But how is the truth of such a 
definition to be guaranteed ? Of the soul as a simple 
substance, apart from its particular modifications, con- 
sciousness tells us nothing. Its permanent existence is 
known only in conjunction with and by means of its 
successive modifications. How, then, is this abstract 
conception of the nature of the soul to be verified ? It 
cannot be self-evident ; for self-evidence is nothing more 
than the instantaneous assent of consciousness ; and the 
assumption in question cannot be submitted to the 
judgment of consciousness at all. It cannot be demon- 
strable ; for it could only be demonstrated by the 
assumption of a higher notion of the same kind, concern- 
ing which the same question would then have to be 
raised. It cannot be generalised from experience ; for 
experience deals with the facts of consciousness only, 
and tells us not of what must be, but only of what is or 
seems to be. Unable to verify his fundamental definition 
by any reference to the reality which it is supposed 
to represent, the* metaphysician is compelled to confine 
himself to the relations of the language by which 
it is represented. 

The case is still stronger as regards the other two 
branches of deductive metaphysics. Cosmology, as ex- 
hibited by Wolf, professes to deduce, from ontological 
principles, a demonstration of the nature of the world 
and the manner in which it is produced from simple 



296 METAPHYSICS. 

substances.* The world, according to this method, is 
represented as an absolute whole, or entire system of 
causes and effects, which cannot be conceived as itself a 
part of any greater whole ;t and the office of Cosmology 
is to deduce, from the abstract principles of being in 
general, the necessary relations which the world, as a 
compound being, must exhibit. It is thus based, not on 
an examination of the mundane phenomena as they 
actually exist in the present system of nature, but on 
the general conception of the world, as a possible sys- 
tem, under which the actual system is included, as an 
individual under a species. % Cosmology, as thus exhi- 
bited, can contain nothing more than an analysis of 
general notions, and can lead to no conclusions but such 
as the philosopher has himself virtually assumed in his 
premises. The abstract notion of the word contains 
implicitly whatever attributes we choose to assume as 
its constituents ; and the metaphysical or logical analy- 

* Wolf, Cosmologia Generalis, sees. 2, 7. The following are the 
questions discussed by Wolf in this work, as constituting a metaphysical 
theory of the material world: — "De notione mundi seu universi — De rerum 
nexu et quomodo inde universum resultet — De essentia mundi et ejus 
attributis — De notione corporum ex quibus mundus componitur — De 
essentia et natura corporum — De elementis corporum — De ortu corpo- 
rum ex elementis — de legibus motus — De natura universa et perfec- 
tione mundi — De natura universa in genere, itemque natural i et super- 
naturali — De perfectione mundi — De ordine mundi atque naturae." 

f Kant, Legons de Metaphysique traduites par Tissot, p. 14-1. 

J Wolf, Cosmologia, sect. 49. 



ONTOLOGY. 297 

sis of that notion can contain no more. For the world, 
as a possible system of realities, and not as an actual 
system of phenomena, is not an object of intuition, 
pure or empirical ; and, without intuition, it is impos- 
sible to connect the concepts of the understanding with 
a single attribute beyond those which they contain in 
their original comprehension * 

This criticism is still more applicable to the system 
of Rational Theology, In this science, we are supposed 
to start from a nominal definition of the Deity, as the 
most perfect being, containing in his nature the sum of 
all possible realities in an absolutely perfect degree.+ 
But here again the question arises — How do we know 
that our conception at all corresponds to the nature of 
the being whom it professes to represent ? The object, 

* "Cosmology," says Hegel (Encyklopccdic, sec. 35), "treated of 
questions concerning the contingency or necessity of the world, its eter- 
nity or limitation in space and time, and the formal law of its changes ; 
together with those concerning human freedom, and the origin of evil. 
It contemplated its object, however, not as a concrete whole, bul only 
according to abstract definitions. Thus, for example, it discussed such 
questions as, whether the world is subject to chance or necessity ; 
whether it is eternal or created." A portion of the questions hen 1 
mentioned were sometimes transferred to other brandies of metaphysics ; 
but the method in all cases was the same, and the results equally barren, 

t The following are the matters treated of in the second OT <> / 
portion of Wolfs TTieologia Xnturalis, — " De notione entis perfectis- 
simi et ejus existentia— De intellectu Dei — De voluntate Dei — De crea- 
tione, providentia, et potentia Dei — De atheismo I ><• fotalismo/deismo, 
et naturalismo — De anthropomorphismo, materialismo, el idealism., l » 
paganism 0, manichrcisino, spinozismo, et epicurssismo." 



298 METAPHYSICS. 

which the conception represents, is either given in some 
fact of consciousness, or it is not. If it is not given, I 
cannot compare the conception with its object : for com- 
parison is itself an act of consciousness, and cannot be 
applied to anything of which I am not conscious. If it 
is given, it must be given, like all other facts of con- 
sciousness, in the form of an object related to myself 
By what right, again, do I venture to transcend that 
relation, and assume that what is given in relation to 
me is identical with that which exists out of all rela- 
tion? We are not, be it remembered, discussing the 
sufficiency of the religious consciousness for the spirit- 
ual wants of man : we are only examining the claim of 
the metaphysician to found thereon a system of abso- 
lute and necessary truths. Such a system claims, in its 
very conception, a right to transcend consciousness. The 
form of consciousness is myself, and the facts of con- 
sciousness postulate my existence as their condition. 
By what warrant am I justified in reasoning from the 
relative to the absolute — in identifying that which de- 
pends on me with that on which I depend ? A concep- 
tion of the Deity, in his absolute existence, appears to 
involve a self-contradiction ; for conception itself is a 
limitation, and a conception of the absolute Deity is a 
limitation of the illimitable. 



ONTOLOGY. 200 



OF THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT. 

The above method of dogmatic metaphysics, of which 
the most complete specimen is furnished by the writings 
of the celebrated Leibnitzian philosopher, Wolf, received 
its death-blow from the criticism of Kant. The funda- 
mental position of the Wolfian dogmatism consisted in 
the assumption that the realities of the intelligible 
world constitute a system of immutable truths, which 
furnish the reason and the explanation of the pheno- 
mena of the world of sense. The counter-theory of 
Kant consisted in showing that the conceptions of the 
understanding and the ideas of the reason are equally 
phenomenal and relative with the intuitions of sense. 
The whole field of consciousness, reflective as well as 
sensitive, he argued, is the product of an objective and a 
subjective element, and can in no case be regarded as 
the exact representation of an extra-mental reality. 
We can perceive only as the laws of our intuitive con- 
sciousness, exhibited in the forms of space and time, 
permit : we can think only as the laws of our reflective 
consciousness, manifested in the categories of the under- 
standing, permit. The product, in both cases alike, is 
not a thing in itself, but a phenomenon, or thing such as 
the laws of our mental constitution determine it to ap- 
pear to us. The object, in one mode of consciousin 



300 METAPHYSICS. 

much as in another, is coloured by the medium through 
which it passes to reach the mind ; and, in bringing the 
phenomena of sense before the tribunal of intellectual 
conceptions, we are not comparing the phenomenal with 
the real, the representation with the thing represented ; 
we are only comparing one class of phenomena with 
another, and judging the representations of the human 
senses by the representations of the human understand- 
ing. Even the ideas of the reason, which correspond to 
the three great objects of metaphysical inquiry — God, 
the world, and the human soul — are not representations 
of objects actually discerned in their own nature, but 
regulative principles of thought, fallaciously invested 
with an objective existence. A necessity of thought 
manifestly indicates a law under which we must think ; 
but it does not therefore guarantee the existence of a 
corresponding reality out of thought. The true thing in 
itself, the heing, as distinguished from the phenomenon, 
is not the object such as we are compelled to conceive 
it, but the object out of all relation to our faculties ; 
and, as such, it is manifestly unknown and unknow- 
able. To perceive a thing in itself would be to perceive 
it neither in space nor in time ; for these are forms fur- 
nished by the constitution of our perceptive faculties, 
and form an element of the phenomenal object of intui- 
tion only. To think of a thing in itself would be to 
think of it neither as one, nor as many, nor under any 



ONTOLOGY. 301 

other category ;* for these, again, depend upon the con- 
stitution of our understanding, and form an element of 
the phenomenal object of thought. The phenomenal is 
the product of the inherent laws of our own mental con- 
stitution, and, as such, is the sum and the limit of all 
the knowledge to which we can attain. 

The logical result of Kant's speculative philosophy 
(of his practical philosophy we can say nothing at pre- 
sent), was to prove that real being cannot be an object 
of human thought ; and, consequently, that a system of 
Ontology, in the highest sense of that term, is unattain- 
able by human reasoning. But, partly in consequence 
of the inconsistencies of Kant himself, and partly be- 
cause of the sweeping scepticism to which his method 
at last appeared to lead, it was almost inevitable that 
his successors should attempt to reconstruct on a surer 
basis the dogmatic metaphysics which his criticism had 
overthrown. The Kantian philosophy had confined 
itself too much to negative results : it had demonstrated 
the inconclusiveness of the earlier systems of metaphy- 
sics : it had exhibited in the clearest light those appar- 
ent self-contradictions of the human reason which make 
metaphysics, in some form or other, an intellectual neces- 
sity to man ; but it had not attempted to solve the con- 
tradictions it exhibited : it had neither pointed out the 
way to a surer metaphysical system, nor placed the 

* For a list of the Kantian categories, see above, p. 193. 



302 METAPHYSICS. 

reason in a position to dispense with metaphysics alto- 
gether. Kant had only succeeded in showing that the 
household of human consciousness was divided against 
itself : he had neither been able to merge the contradic- 
tion in a higher "principle of unity, nor to ' show that 
contradiction itself is an evidence of truth and reality. 
The want which a philosophy of the real attempts to 
satisfy still remained ; and to meet that want it was 
necessary to reconstruct metaphysics by another method. 
Kant had proved that the real, in its highest sense, 
could not be an object of consciousness : his successors 
accepted the conclusion, and consistently attempted to 
construct a philosophy of the real which should be 
above consciousness. Kant had proved it to be impos- 
sible to bring the object in itself within the grasp of the 
subject : there remained the yet wilder attempt to ex- 
pand the subject to the immensity of the object — an 
attempt which necessarily ended in the identification 
and consequent annihilation of both. 



The philosophy of Fichte furnished the transition 
from a destructive criticism to a new form of construc- 
tive dogmatism. The primitive fact of consciousness is 
that of a relation between the ego and the non-ego, be- 
tween myself, the conscious subject, and an object of 



ONTOLOGY. 303 

which I am conscious. But, thus manifested, self and 
not-self are correlative terms, existing for each other only 
under the conditions of human consciousness ; that is to 
say, as phenomena, in Kant's sense of the term. To 
attain to a philosophy of the real, it was necessary to 
merge this primitive relation between the subject and 
object of consciousness in a higher relation between the 
entire world of phenomena revealed by consciousness, 
and the ultimate reality beyond it. And this was partly 
accomplished by the theory of Fichte. Commencing 
with the mere existence of consciousness in some mode 
or other, he endeavours to reduce this existence to its 
simplest and most abstract form, by the discovery of 
some principle which necessarily lies at the basis of all 
consciousness and is independent of any empirical modi- 
fication. Such a principle, as regards its form, is found 
in the logical law of identity, A is A. But to give 
this principle a real as well as a formal necessity, to 
raise it from a logical to a metaphysical axiom, we must 
regard its terms as signifying something which unques- 
tionably does exist, and whose identity with itself is 
therefore not merely hypothetical but absolute. Such 
an unquestionable existence is found in the ego. For in 
thinking that A is A, I, the thinker, necessarily exist ; 
and the judgment, / am 2", has thus an absolute neces- 
sity in matter, no less than in form.* The fact of con- 

* GrwidliKjc der (jCMiiLndcd WisscnschaftdJiri, sect 1. 



304- METAPHYSICS. 

sciousness thus implies the existence of a conscious sub- 
ject ; and this subject, though manifested in conscious- 
ness as modified in a particular manner, must be sup- 
posed to have an independent existence distinct from 
any special modification. Hence the first postulate of 
philosophy is that of the existence of an absolute ego or 
unconscious subject, susceptible potentially of all modes 
of consciousness, but actually modified by none. The 
first formula of Fichte's system, "A = A," or r the ego 
posits itself, may thus be interpreted to mean, " the fact 
of a necessary thought implies the existence, not only of 
an actual thinker, but of a real subject, capable of be- 
coming a thinker." But this real subject, though exist- 
ing independently of consciousness, becomes aware of 
its own existence only in and by consciousness. And 
consciousness, as a particular phenomenon, depends 
upon something by which the impulse is given to the 
subject, whereby it determines itself to become con- 
scious. Hence the ego, in becoming conscious of its own 
existence, supposes at the same time, though it is not 
conscious of, the existence of a non-ego. And this is ex- 
pressed by the second formula " — A ^ A ; or, the ego 
implies a non-ego." But this implied non-ego is merely 
supposed by an act of thought, in order to account for 
the fact of the ego becoming conscious of itself. Hence 
arises the third formula of Fichte's system — " The ego and 
the non-ego are both posited by the ego itself;" in other 






ONTOLOGY. 305 

words, the relative and eonscious ego, and its counter- 
part, the non-ego implied by consciousness, both owe 
their existence to the fact that the absolute ego becmin a 
conscious of itself. Hence these are posited in and by 
the absolute ego. 

The absolute ego is thus the one primitive existence, 
and, as such, must be absolutely free. Hence, in be- 
coming conscious, the ego, by a free act, creates the 
whole contents of its consciousness — the modified ego 
and the non-ego together. The non-ego of Fichte thus 
assumes the position which in the Kantian philosophy 
was occupied by the tit lag in itself, being not the object 
of consciousness, but the supposed reality beyond ; ami 
this supposed reality is itself shown to possess only a 
secondary and derivative existence, being postulated In 
account for the fact of consciousness ; which fact itself 
is the result of the self-determination of the absolute 
ego. 

The error of this system (an error shared by most of 
the subsequent developments of German metaphysics) 
is, that it attempts to explain and account for the primi- 
tive dualism of consciousness, instead of accepting this 
fact as the principle from which the explanations of 
philosophy must take their start. Hence we have the 
contradictory ideas of an ego absolutely free, and 
compelled to posit the existence of a i\<m-<g<>. The ego, 
we are told, strives to realise its own freedom. How 

x 



306 METAPHYSICS. 

came that freedom ever to be impaired or to need realisa- 
tion ? Does anything ever freely operate to its own de- 
terioration ? Or rather, we may ask, does not freedom 
itself imply consciousness ? Is it not a self-contradic- 
tion to suppose a free agent unconscious of its own free- 
dom? The philosophy which starts from the single 
being of God is presumptuous enough, and deals suffi- 
ciently with the incomprehensible. But Fichte's system, 
in making the ego the first principle of all things, leaves 
no room for the distinct existence of a Deity ; and hence 
Fichte is compelled to confess that he knows no other 
God than the moral order of things.* In this unsatis- 
factory position, the absolute ego is compelled to give 
way to a higher idea ; and thus Fichte's later philosophy, 
while retaining its original terminology, virtually passes 
over to a new position, in which he had been already 
anticipated by Schelling. 

The rival theories of Schelling and Hegel present 
the most perfect specimens, from two opposite points of 
view, of a system of metaphysics constructed, not merely 
independently of, but in direct opposition to, the laws of 
consciousness. The ego and non-ego of Fichte, in their 
original form, were entities beyond consciousness, but 
not necessarily antagonistic to it : — on the contrary, they 
were rather represented as harmonising with and ex- 

* Ucber den Gruncl unseres Glaubens an eine Gottliche Weltregierung. 
TVerke, vol. v. p. 186. 



ONTOLOGY. 307 

plaining consciousness itself. But as thus implied by, 
and yet not given in, consciousness, they necessarily 
remained unknown and unknowable. Consciousness 
might, perhaps, justify the inference that they are ; but 
it could not possibly inform us what they are. The en- 
tities of Fichte were thus, though arrived at by a differ- 
ent process, virtually the same as those of the older 
metaphysicians — the unknown subjects or causes of 
sensible or intellectual phenomena. To make the Eeal 
an object of science, it was necessary that it should be 
directly given or revealed to intelligence : — there must 
be an absolute Knowing to answer to the absolute Being. 
Philosophy must postulate, not merely an object of know- 
ledge beyond consciousness, but a manner of knowledge 
above it ; and this was attempted in two ways — by 
Schelling, from the side of the presentative faculties ; 
and by Hegel, from that of the representative. The 
former based his philosophy on the fiction of an intel- 
lectual intuition emancipated from the conditions of 
space and time ; the latter, on that of a logical reason 
emancipated from the laws of thought. 

In the philosophy of Schelling, the ego is stripped of 
even the small remnant of personality which it retained 
in the original scheme of Fichte. That which in Fichtefa 
system appears as an abstract self, modified in no parti- 
cular manner, but susceptible of modification in any, 
becomes, from Schelling'a point of view, abstract intel* 



308 METAPHYSICS. 

ligence in general, having no personality, but capable of 
becoming personal. In Fichte's system, the absolute ego 
creates the several modes and objects of its own con- 
sciousness. In Schelling's, the absolute intelligence, by 
a free act, creates its own personality with its modes on 
the one side, and the material world or system of nature 
on the other* Thus the object, which in Fichte's 
system is posited by the subject, becomes in Schelling's 
identified with it ; subject and object being merged in 
the Absolute, which in its own nature is the indifference 
of the two, and which creates the distinction by becom- 
ing conscious of itself.f The system is thus at the same 
time realism and idealism : the world of things and the 
world of thought are but two opposite aspects of one 
and the same being, manifesting itself without or with 
consciousness. \ The human reason is identical with the 
divine ; and philosophy is the reproduction of creation, 
or rather is creation itself ; for the philosophy of the 
absolute is above the condition of time : it is not an 
imitation or repetition of the divine thought, but the 
divine thought itself developed into consciousness. 

It is obvious to ask how such a system, admitting it 
to be possible or even true, can be known to be possible 
or true. Can the individual man, supposing him to be 

* Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur, p. 9, sqq. (2d edition) ; 
Bruno, p. 57, sqq. (2d edition). 

+ Ideen, p. 67, sqq. ; System des transcendentalen Idealismus, p. 480. 
X Ideen, p. 64 ; System des tr. Idealismus, p. 17. 



ONTOLOGY. 309 

a phenomenon and not a reality, become conscious of his 
own nonentity ? The first testimony of consciousness is 
to the existence of the conscious subject : the idea of 
reality and existence arises in and by that testimony. 
Can I then, existing in consciousness, be at the same 
time conscious that I do not exist ? Can I be conscious 
and not conscious, substance and accident, reality and 
phenomenon, personally existing and merged in the ab- 
solute, at one and the same instant, in one and the same 
act ? This Schelling's theory virtually declares to be 
possible ; and the means by which it is accomplished is 
Intellectual Intuition. This intuition is the instrument 
and the method of philosophy : it is the process by 
which the absolute becomes conscious of itself, by which 
the philosopher becomes conscious of his identity with 
the absolute.* It is an act out of time, and by which 
time is constituted ; an act which is distinct from and 
above ordinary consciousness ; which cannot be described 
in language or apprehended in conception ; whose results 
cannot be communicated to ordinary consciousness, and, 
of course, cannot be verified by it. f 

Let us grant for an instant such an abnormal state to 
be possible. Let us grant even that, the state being 
above conception, it is no argument against it thai its 
conception is self-contradictory and annihilates itself 
What even then would be proved, save thai <mr portion 
* System des tr. IdealisiMU, p. 50, tqq. t Ibid, pp. 59, 171. 



310 METAPHYSICS. 

of our knowledge is at variance with another, and that 
there is no arbiter to decide between them ? Cogito, ergo 
sum ; — the act of knowledge is an act of personal exist- 
ence : — this is the testimony of the normal conscious- 
ness. Cogito, ergo non sum ; — the act of knowledge is 
an act in which personal existence disappears in the ab- 
solute : — this is the testimony of the abnormal intuition. 
Neither of these can judge the other ; for neither testi- 
mony can be translated into the language or represented 
in the thought of the other. It is mere idle boasting for 
the w T ould-be philosopher to assert the superiority of his 
instrument over that employed by the rest of mankind ; 
for superiority implies comparison, and comparison is an 
act of relation, and relation annihilates the absolute as 
such * The controversy must remain undecided, until a 
third faculty shall be discovered, which, being, in one 
and the same act, normal and abnormal, conscious and 
not conscious, existent and non-existent, may embody 

* The acute and decisive criticism of Schelling's theory by Sir W. 
Hamilton, is too valuable to be omitted in this place. " We cannot at 
the same moment be in the intellectual intuition and in common con- 
sciousness ; we must therefore be able to connect them by an act of 
memory — of recollection. But how can there be a remembrance of the 
absolute and its intuition ? As out of time, and space, and relation, and 
difference, it is admitted that the absolute cannot be construed to the 
understanding. But as remembrance is only possible under the condi- 
tions of the understanding, it is consequently impossible to remember 
anything anterior to the moment when we awaken into consciousness ; 
and the clairvoyance of the absolute, even granting its reality, is thus, 
after the crisis, as if it had never been " {Discussions, p. 23). 



ONTOLOGY. 311 

in one process the results of intellectual intuition and 
ordinary consciousness, and examine them on common 
principles before a common tribunal 

Something like this union of all contradictories is 
proclaimed in the Logical Idea of Hegel, the supreme 
principle of all truth and of all reality.* The method 
of Hegel commenced by attempting to justify the as- 
sumption of Schelling, and ended by superseding it. 
AVhile admitting, as substantially true, the fundamental 
principle of Schelling's philosophy, the unity of subject 
and object in the Absolute, Hegel protests decidedly 
against the method by which, according to Schelling's 
theory, this principle is apprehended. The intellectual 
intuition, which is demanded as the condition of all 
philosophy, is a faculty which any individual may or 
may not possess. The philosophy of Schelling thus ap- 
pears to demand, as its condition, a special artistic talent 

* In the words of Hegel himself, " Die Idee kann als Subjekt-Ob- 
jekt, als die Einheit ties Ideellen und Reellen, des Endlichen and l*n- 
endlichen, der Seele und des Leibs, als die Moglichkeit, die ihre Wirk- 
lichkeit an ilir selbat hat, as das, dessen Natur nur als exiatirend be- 
gritfen werden kann u.s.f. gefasst werden, weil in ihr alle Verhaltniaae 
des Veratandea, alter in ihrer nnendlickken Biackkehr und Identitat in 
sich enthalten sind " (JBneykkpSdie, sec. 214). In the words of his 
disciple and expositor, Michelet : — "Die Idee ist als Werden, die Kin- 
heit von Sein und Nichta, als Unendlichea, die Einheit dee Etwaa und 
seines Andern ; Weaen und ErBCheinong, Form und Materia, Lonerea 
und Aeusseres, Mbglichkeit und Wirklichkeit, Allgemeinea and Beaon- 

. u.s.f. sind ebenao darin zur Identitat gekommen " [<■' 
Ictztoi System* dcr Philosophic, voL ii. p. 745). 



312 METAPHYSICS. 

or genius, an accidental gift of good luck. But philo- 
sophy must, from its nature, be capable of becoming 
common to all men ; for it is based upon thought, and 
thought is the characteristic of man as man * But the 
logical process which Hegel announces as common to 
all men is at least as far removed from the conditions of 
normal intelligence as the extraordinry endowment de- 
manded by Schelling. The postulate upon which the 
entire system rests — the identity of thought and being — 
is constantly asserted, but never proved ; and this as- 
sumed identity necessitates a conception of thought not 
only distinct from, but at variance with, the evidence of 
consciousness. Thought in consciousness is manifested 
in the form of successive modifications of the personal 
self — relative, determinate, special states of my individual 
existence. Thought in the system of Hegel is repre- 
sented as an impersonal, absolute, indeterminate, univer- 
sal, unconscious substance, determining itself in opposed 
and yet identical modifications, becoming all things, con- 
stituting the essence of all things, and attaining to con- 
sciousness only in man. Consciousness is thus the 
accident, not the essence, of thought ; and the uncon- 
scious process of the idea in nature is regarded as fun- 
damentally one with the conscious development of 
human intelligence. Hegel's famous theory of the 
identity of contradictions derives its whole plausibility 

* Geschichte der Philosophic. WerJce, vol. xv. p. 592. 



ONTOLOGY. 313 

from a twofold confusion — of thought with "being, and 
of identity with coexistence. In consciousness, two 
identical thoughts are undistinguishable from each 
other ; and as consciousness is only possible as a cogni- 
tion of differences, it follows that a system of identical 
determinations of consciousness is tantamount to the 
annihilation of all consciousness. The possibility of 
consciousness, therefore, implies the coexistence of op- 
posites ; but, for the very reason that there is coexist- 
ence, there is not identity. Any special modification of 
consciousness is discerned to be that which it is by being 
distinguished from that which it is not ; and in this 
manner consciousness is only possible on the condition 
of a relation, not merely between subject and object, but 
between a plurality of objects opposed to each other. 
But, in order that these opposite objects should be re- 
garded as identical, or rather as constituent elements of 
one and the same reality, it is necessary that the notion 
or thing in itself should be represented, not as a single 
object of consciousness, but as an unperceived subsl ra- 
tum, which underlies the relation between the two op- 
posed objects, and out of which they mutually spring as 
djetinct sides of one and the same reality. Being La 
thus no longer identical with thought : — or rather tliV 
term thought is used in an equivocal sense, to denote 
consciousness and unconsciousness at the same time. 
But it is nowhere explained how this abstract thought 



314 METAPHYSICS. 

can exist independently of a thinking mind ; nor how, 
supposing it to exist, and supposing the philosopher to 
become conscious of its existence, his consciousness is 
thereby identified with the object of which he is con- 
scious. 

The method of Hegel is sometimes described as an 
attempt to re-think the great thought of creation ; * the 
philosopher being supposed to place himself at the point 
at which the Divine mind developed itself into finite 
existences, and to repeat that development in the pro- 
cess of his own system. This supposition is sufficiently 
presumptuous ; but, as usually understood, it by no 
means expresses the full pretensions of Hegel's theory. 
Creation, in the Hegelian point of view, does not im- 
ply a creator, nor thought a thinker. Instead of com- 
mencing with God, as the beginning of all existence, 
this philosophy commences with zero. The notion, 
whose development constitutes the process alike of ex- 
istence and of thought, is pure Being, which is identical 
with pure Nothing.! The union of being and nothing 

* " Den grossen Gedanken der Schopfung noch einmal zu denken." 
Such, according to Hegel's editor, Michelet, is the true business of phi- 
losophy. "In der That," he continues, "was konnen wir Anderes 
wollen, wenn wir liber die Natur philosophiren, als das intelligible Wesen 
der Natur, die zeugenden Ideen derselben, aus dem Innern unseres Geist- 
es denkend zu reproduciren ?" (Hegel's Werke, vol. vii., Editor's Preface.) 

+ "Das Seyn, das unbestimmte TJnmittelbare ist in der That Nichts, 
und nicht mehr noch weniger als Nichts. . . . Nichts ist dieselbe 
Bestimmung, oder vielmehr Bestimmungslosigkeit, und damit uberhaupt 



ONTOLOGY. 315 

constitutes Becoming;* and from becoming proceeds all 
determinate existence. The Hegelian process may thus 
be described as a creation of the Deity no less than 
of the world ; for it recognises the existence of no Deity 
distinct from the world. But the philosopher, though 
aspiring to construct the universe, is virtually compelled 
to assume a prior universe as his foundation. Though 
he will not postulate a mover, he is compelled to postu- 
late motion. The pure being, which is also pure 
nothing, has a power of self-developmentf How this 
process takes place ; or how pure nonentity can con- 
tain a principle of self- development ; or how, if befog 
and nothing are absolutely one and the same, they can 
at the same time be two elements united together ; oi 
how the union of the identical with the identical 
form a compound distinct from its factor or factors — 
these points Hegel has omitted to explain. 

There is a germ of truth in Hegel's opening paradox. 
"pure being is pure nothing," if it be understood as 
applied, where alone w r e have any data for applying it, 
to the necessary limitations of human thought The 

dasselbe, was das reine Seyn ist" (Hegel, Logik, b. i. chap. 1 : < 1. 
Encyklop&die, sec. 87). 

* "Das Nichta ist als dieses nnmittelbare, aid selbetgleiche, el 
ozngekehrt dasselbe, was das Seyn ist Die vrahrheil d o wis 

desNichts, ist daherdie Emheit header j disss Kudu-it ist das //'. 
{EnnjkJ. sec. 88; Cf. Logik, b. i. c. i.) 

+ Bee the criticism of Trendelenburg, I 
vol. i. c. ii. 



316 METAPHYSICS. 

conceptions of man are limited to the finite and deter- 
minate ; we can conceive existence only under the con- 
ditions of relation and difference, as this particular kind 
of existence, distinguished from others. The conception 
of being in general which is no being in particular, is 
thus, to human intelligence, no conception at all : it 
indicates only the absence of any definite object of 
thought, and consequently of any power of thinking. 
But to convert this negation of the relative into an 
affirmation of the absolute, is to go beyond the ancient 
sophist, to make man's ignorance, instead of his know- 
ledge, the measure of all things, and thus to dogmatise 
on no other grounds than the absence of all materials 
for dogmatism. • And even this apotheosis of human 
impotence does not guarantee the fundamental assump- 
tion of the system; for if being is the same as non- 
being, and if being and thought are one, thought is also 
identical with the negation of thought ; and the absolute 
thinking, which is absolute existence, is, by the same 
argument, no thinking at all. 

OF THE SYSTEM OF HEEBART. 

The Idealist Systems of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, 
while differing considerably in their details, were 
characterised by one common principle. They all 
sought to escape from the phenomenal and relative 
character of the products of consciousness, by placing 



ONTOLOGY. 317 

real being in an unity above consciousness. In antagon- 
ism to these, another offshoot of the Kantian criticism, 
the Realism of Herbart, sought to attain the same end 
by means of a plurality below consciousness. The one 
attempted to generalise beyond the limits of thought ; 
the other, to individualise beyond the limits of sense. 
According to Herbart, all the original notions which we 
form of the objects presented to us by experience, 
whether as regards external or internal phenomena, are. 
upon examination, found to involve contradictions, and 
thus to condemn themselves as inconceivable. Tin- 
office of Metaphysics is so to modify these notions a 
remove the contradictions, and thus to reconcile the 
testimony of experience with the requirements of 
thought* To attain this end, Herbart has recourse ton 
modified form of Leibnitz's theory of monads. t The 
phenomena of experience are regarded as dependent on 
the mutual relations of a number of real or absolute 
beings, simple, unextended in space, and subject to no 
succession in time, and thus without parts and without 

* "Die Metaphysik hat keine andre Bestimmung, als die nam- 
lichen Begriffe, welchedie Erfahrungihraufdringt, denkbarxumachen" 
[Lehrbuch -."/■ Einleitung in die Philosophies sec. 149). 

t "Herbart, says Trendelenburg, "has recourse, on the one ride, 
to tin; Eleatics, ami, on the other, to Leibnitz. From the former he 
acknowledges the pure conception of existence, hut denies that existent e 
is one. From the Latter he accepts the plurality of existences, hut re- 
fuses to endow the monads with a plurality of sttributo 
UcvbarCs Metaphysik, p 



318 METAPHYSICS. 

change. We are thus, he thinks, enabled to avoid the 
fundamental contradiction of experience, with which all 
philosophy has to struggle — the antagonism between 
the One and the Many ; we escape from the paradox of 
maintaining that the same thing can consist simultan- 
eously of various elements, or exist successively in 
various states. Every real being is simple in itself, 
though different one from another : the world of sen- 
sible experience is but an aggregate of phenomena, 
resulting from the mutual attraction and repulsion of 
insensible units ; and the principle which pervades the 
whole is the effort of each unit for self-conservation. 

Among many merits of detail, it is impossible to 
overlook the weakness of Herbart's fundamental as- 
sumption. His system, by deriving the known world 
of relations from an unknown world of absolute beings, 
postulates ignorance as its starting-point, and makes 
philosophy dependent on an assumption whose only 
guarantee is, that we have no means of verifying it. 
The existence of the supposed world of realities is un- 
known; for it confessedly lies beyond the limits of 
experience ; and mere thought does not prove the 
reality of its object. Its relation to the world of phe- 
nomena is unknown ; for the knowledge of a relation 
implies the knowledge of both correlatives. Its exist- 
ence is assumed in order to solve certain supposed 
contradictions ; and the assumption itself introduces 



ONTOLOGY. 319 

other contradictions; for the conceptions of extension 
composed of unextended elements, and of attraction 
and repulsion out of time and space, are in appearance 
no less contradictory than those which they pretend to 
explain, and labour under the additional difficulty that 
they are not even apparently warranted by experie] 
The real world of Herbart is thus reduced to the 
condition of an occult cause — an ens rationis — 
which might perhaps be shown to exist had we the 
faculties requisite for discerning it; but which, upon 
the same supposition, might equally be shown not to 
exist ; and which, to our present faculties, is encum- 
bered with apparent contradictions which render the 
latter conclusion the more probable of the two. The 
theory solves none of the difficulties which give rise to 
it, but only conjectures that, under certain possible 
conditions of superhuman knowledge, they might be 
soluble; — a very legitimate position, if it were pro- 
posed as resting, not on reason, but on faith — not as 
explaining difficulties, but as bidding us rest content 
without explanation — not as the basis of a theory, but 
as a reason why theories are inadmissible Let OS 
grant, for the moment, Herbart's assertion that our in- 
tuition of objects in space and time is at variance 
with the laws of thought It is no solution of th< 
traduction to reply thai there may possibly be a super- 
human intuition of objects out of space and time, and 



320 METAPHYSICS. 

that, if we had such an intuition, there might perhaps 
be no variance. For we do not know that such an in- 
tuition is possible ; and we do not know that, if it were 
possible, it might not present still greater variance. 
And so long as there is variance, what right has one of 
the adverse faculties of our nature to demand the sub- 
mission of the other. Why should experience give 
way to thought, rather than thought to experience? 
"Which is the wiser here — justice or iniquity?" 
Which element of our nature testifies to the real, and 
which to the phenomenal ? 

OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ABSOLUTE IN GENEEAL. 

This brief survey of the principal ontological systems 
of modern Germany, the only country in which the 
study of Ontology proper has been zealously pursued in 
recent times, may, it is hoped, be of some use in clear- 
ing the field of discussion, and in bringing the great 
problem of philosophy under certain definite conditions, 
under which alone its solution can be attempted with a 
reasonable hope of success. In abstruse speculations of 
this character we learn almost as much from the chart 
which tells us of rocks and shoals to be avoided, as from 
the compass which points out the direction in which we 
ought to steer ; and the study of the Philosophy of the 
Absolute is at least serviceable in eliminating elements 
foreign to the investigation of the truth, and in teaching 



ONTOLOGY. 321 

us, as Hegel himself said of the Newtonian optics, the 
manner in which metaphysical inquiries ought not to 
be pursued. Various and conflicting as are the theories 
of modern German philosophy, one common error may be 
detected as pervading all of them — that of identifying 
Reality with the Absolute or Unconditioned. Instead 
of examining the conception of the real as it is formed 
under the necessary conditions of human thought, and 
inquiring what is the object which corresponds to the 
conception so conditioned, they assume at the outset 
that real existence means existence dependent upon 
nothing but itself, and that the conception of real exist- 
ence is a conception determined by no antecedent. 
Ontology is thus the absolute knowledge of absolute 
being ; and, from this point of view, being and know- 
ledge are necessarily one and the same thing; for if the 
object known is distinct from the act of knowing, the 
latter, to be valid, must conform itself to the nature of 
the former, and thus becomes relative and subject to 
conditions. Absolute knowledge is thus possible only 
on the condition that the mind, in the act of thought, 
creates the objects about which it thinks ; — or rather, 
that the act of thought itself creates its own objecl and 
subject ; for we clearly renounce in limim all pretension 
to absolute knowledge, if we admit that the act of 
knowing is in any degree dependent on the prior con- 
stitution either of a mind which thinks, or of a thing 

Y 



322 METAPHYSICS. 

about which it thinks. The Philosophy of the Absolute 
thus admits of a twofold refutation ; in the consequences 
to which it leads, and in the premises from which it 
starts. In its consequences it admits of no alterna- 
tives but Atheism or Pantheism ; atheism, if the abso- 
lute reality or creative thought is identified with 
myself; — pantheism, if it is identified with anything 
beyond myself. Subjective Absolutism, or Egoism, pos- 
tulates self as the primitive reality on which all things 
depend, and acknowledges no God distinct from self 
and its modifications. Objective Absolutism regards 
personality itself as a phenomenal manifestation of some 
higher reality, which alone is truly existent, and to 
which it gives the name, but not the nature, of God. 
Religion is equally annihilated under both suppositions ; 
for if there is no God, whom are we to worship ? and if 
all things are God, who is to worship him ? Morality 
is equally annihilated under both suppositions ; for if I 
am the Absolute, I create my own moral duties, and 
cannot be required to conform to any standard inde- 
pendent of myself ; and if I am a mode of the Divine 
Being my actions flow from the self-determinations of 
the Deity, and are all equally necessary and equally 
divine. The premises from which these consequences 
issue are equally untenable with the consequences 
themselves. The primary testimony of consciousness 
affirms the distinct existence of an ego and a non-ego, 



ONTOLOGY. 

related to and limiting each other. I know myself as 
existing in the midst of certain phenomena, which I 
did not create, and can only partially control. Pan 
theism contradicts the first element of consciousness, by 
denying the real existence of myself. Egoism contra- 
dicts the second element, by denying the real existence 
of anything distinct from myself. But if the testimony 
of consciousness on this point is false, how can I assume 
that it is true in any secondary and derived modifica- 
tion ? How do I know that the very language of the phi- 
losopher of the absolute means what it appears to mean, 
or that my conviction of the truth of his system is not 
itself an evidence of its falsehood? Nay, how do I 
know that there is any philosophy of the absolute at all, 
or that the book in which, seeming to be myself, I seem 
to read it, has any contents, or communicates any 
knowledge, or is addressed to any reader ? 

OF THE CONDITIONS NECESSARY TO THE EXISTENCE OF 
ONTOLOGY. 

Thilosophy commences with doubt ; and doubt is a 
state of consciousness. It is necessary, therefore, that 
the object of Ontology, as a branch of philosophy, should 
be one to whose existence, at least in idea, consciousness 
bears positive testimony. This is not the case with tin,' 
Unconditioned, to the existence of which conscionsi 
only negatively testifies, in so far as contradictory no- 



324 METAPHYSICS. 

tions naturally suggest each other. The conceivable 
suggests the inconceivable ; the real, the unreal ; the 
possible, the impossible ; and the conditioned, the un- 
conditioned. To assume from this suggestion alone 
that we have a distinct conception of the unconditioned, 
or that there is a distinct reality answering to, or iden- 
tical with, that conception, is as unwarrantable as to 
assume on the same grounds the reality of the unreal 
or the conceivability of the inconceivable. Thought is 
positive in so far as it represents an actual intuition ; 
and two opposite objects, which can be both presented 
intuitively, may be both conceived reflectively, whether 
the terms by which the conceptions are denoted are 
positive or negative, contrary or contradictory. But, 
without a corresponding intuition, positive thought is 
impossible ; and the intellectual intuition of Schelling is 
thus a necessary condition of the existence of any Philo- 
sophy of the Absolute. Unfortunately for the Absolute, 
the intellectual intuition is a state of mind to whose 
existence consciousness does not and cannot testify ; — 
nay, which it distinctly and positively declares to be 
impossible. 

It is thus indispensable for the metaphysician, before 
commencing an inquiry into the nature of the Eeal, to 
ask what is the actual conception of the Eeal which 
consciousness furnishes ; and what is the evidence on 
which we assert the existence of a corresponding object. 



ONTOLOGY. 

Tt may be that the facts of consciousness present nothing 
but phenomena, and that the real is merely suggested 1 >y 
language as the negation of the phenomenal ; or it may 
be that some of the facts of consciousness exhibit cer- 
tain characteristics, which indicate a higher amount of 
reality than can be assigned to others. Is the notion of 
the real positive or negative ? and if it is positive, in 
what acts of consciousness do we find the corresponding 
intuition ? When we have answered these questions, we 
shall have succeeded at least in confining the problem 
of Ontology within definite limits : we shall have indi- 
cated the field of search, if we do not go so far as to dis- 
cern the object. But the testimony of consciousness is 
clearer on the negative side than on the positive. It 
will assist our inquiry considerably, if we can first ascer- 
tain, from the decisive evidence of consciousness, what 
the Real of which we are in pursuit is not. 

OF THEORIES OF THE REAL NOT FOUNDED ON 
CONSCIOUSNESS. 

In the first place, the Eeal of Consciousness is not the 
Kantian Ding an sich, or thing as it exists in its own 
nature, out of all relation to the human mode of perceiv- 
ing it. Consciousness is given to us as the product of 
two factors, on both of which it is equally dependent, — 
the constitution of the person apprehending, and that of 
the thing apprehended. If either of these were changed 



326 METAPHYSICS. 

the result might be something totally different from its 
present appearance. In mathematical language, the 
result of consciousness is a function of the subject and 
the object together, and must be regarded as variable 
with the variation of either. To attain to a knowledge 
of a thing in itself out of relation to our faculties, it 
would be necessary to apprehend the thing with a new 
set of faculties, retaining at the same time a perfect 
recollection of our former mental constitution and its 
results, in order to separate what is relative and depend- 
ent on the existing constitution of the human mind 
from what is absolute and common to other orders of 
intelligent beings. It is manifest, therefore, that the 
real, in this sense of the term, represents nothing which 
can by any possibility be presented in consciousness. 

In the second place, the Eeal of Consciousness is not 
the Absolute which has reigned supreme in German 
philosophy since the time of Kant ; — that is to say, an 
unconditioned first being, which exists in and by itself, 
and does not imply the prior or simultaneous existence 
of anything else. This has been already shown in our 
previous remarks on this theory, which exhibits its 
antagonism to the primitive dualism of consciousness, in 
w T hich self and not-self mutually imply each other, and, 
consequently, in which neither of them is the absolute. 
It is also sufficiently shown by the admission of the 
absolutist philosophers themselves, who, by basing their 






ONTOLOGY. 327 

systems on a supposed form of knowledge beyond, and 
even contradictory to, consciousness, virtually confess 
that the absolute has no existence in conscious 
The contempt with which the majority of German critics 
almost invariably mention the name of Dualism, is a 
proof, among many others, of the necessity which they 
feel of lifting the standard of philosophy in opposition 
to the authority of consciousness. 

In the third place, the Eeal of Consciousness is not 
the Substance or Matter of an earlier school of metaphysi- 
cians ; that is to say, the insensible substratum of sensible 
qualities, viewed by itself, apart from those attributes by 
which it is made known to experience. AVe may not 
commence our inquiries with the assumption that the 
shape, the colour, the smell, and other sensible qualities 
of a rose are one thing, and that the rose itself, the thing 
possessing the qualities, is another. "The idea/' says 
Locke, "to which we give the general name substance, 
being nothing but the supposed, but unknown support 
of those qualities we find existing, which we imagine 
cannot subsist sine re substantc, without something to 
support them, we call that support substantia ; which, 
according to the true import of the word, is, in plain Eng- 
lish, standing under or upholding." " I perceive/ 1 
Eeid, "in a billiard ball, figure, colour, and motion ; but 
the ball is not figure, nor is it colour, nor motion, nor all 

* Essay, b. ii. chap, xxiii. Bee 2. 



328 METAPHYSICS. 

these taken together ; it is something that has figure, 
and colour, and motion. This is a dictate of nature, and 
the belief of all mankind."* Without attempting at 
present to anticipate the necessary inquiry into the vali- 
dity of that law of belief which apparently compels us 
to refer a plurality of attributes to a single subject, we 
may safely assert that the notion of such a subject, as a 
being distinct from its attributes, is utterly empty and 
meaningless ; and that no such being can be the object 
of metaphysical research. Consciousness does not testify 
that such a being exists or is conceivable ; — nay, such a 
testimony would be impossible without the annihilation 
of consciousness itself. For consciousness is possible 
only under the condition of difference. I can be con- 
scious of an object, as such, only by being conscious of 
it as distinguished from other objects ; and this distinc- 
tion is only possible by means of the special attributes 
which the object possesses. Deprive the billiard ball of 
its figure and colour, and all other sensible qualities, and 
do the same to the table on which it stands ; and how 
is the ball to be distinguished from the table ? The 
residuum, if there is any, is neither the ball as a ball, 
nor the table as a table, nor any one thing as distin- 
guishable from any other thing, nor an object of con- 
sciousness as distinguished from the subject. It is the 
vague and empty notion of being in general which is no 
* Intellectual Powers, Essay ii. chap. xix. 



ONTOLOGY. 329 

being in particular — pure existence, which is identical, 
so far as human thought is concerned, with pure nothing. 
Things can be distinguished from each other only by 
their attributes ; and to be conscious of a thing apart 
from its attributes, is to be conscious of a difference with 
no difference to be conscious of. " The knowledge of 
pure substance distinct from its qualities," Bays M. 
Cousin, "is impossible, for the simple reason that no 
such substance exists. Every real being is of such or 
such a kind ; it is either this or that. If it is real, it is 
determinate ; and to be determinate is to possess certain 
manners of being, transitory and accidental, or constant 
and essential. The knowledge of being in itself is there- 
fore not only forbidden to the human mind, but is con- 
trary to the nature of things.* Whether the existence 
of a thing distinct from any and all of its attributes be, 
as Eeid says, a dictate of nature or not ; at any rate, in 
the instance which he adduces, it is not presented as a 
fact of consciousness, but inferred from the presence of 
the attributes ; and, in maintaining the veracity of the 
facts of consciousness themselves, we do not therefore 
maintain the validity of all the inferences to which those 
facts appear to lead. What is the exact fact upon which 
this inference is grounded, the principle on which it is 
made, and the amount of credit due to it, we Bhall endea- 
vour to show hereafter by an examination of conscious- 

* Histoirc dc la Philosoi^hic Mvr \ii. 



330 METAPHYSICS. 

ness itself. For the present, it is sufficient to say, that 
the fact, whatever it may be, is not a direct cognition of 
the existence of a substratum of material attributes. 

It thus appears that the celebrated hypothesis of 
Bishop Berkeley, so far as it merely denies the existence 
of matter, is not in any way contrary to common-sense 
(if by common-sense is meant the direct evidence of 
consciousness) ; inasmuch as it only denies that con- 
cerning which consciousness offers no evidence at all. 
For matter, in Berkeley's sense, does not mean anything 
which can be perceived by the senses ; but only, as 
Locke defines it, " the supposed, but unknown support 
of those qualities we find existing." " I do not argue," 
says the bishop, " against the existence of any one thing 
that we can apprehend either by sense or reflection. 
That the things I see with mine eyes and touch with 
my hands do exist, really exist, I make not the least 
question. ... If the word substance be taken, in the 
vulgar sense, for a combination of sensible qualities, 
such as extension, solidity, weight, and the like, this we 
cannot be accused of taking away. But if it be taken 
in a philosophic sense, for the support of accidents or 
qualities without the mind, then, indeed, I acknowledge 
that we take it away, if one can be said to take away 
that which never had any existence, not even in the 
imagination."* And had Berkeley confined himself to 

* Principles of Human Knowledge, xxxv. xxxvii. 



ONTOLOGY. 331 

the sceptical side of the question — had lie contented 
himself with maintaining that we have no evidence for 
asserting that matter, in this sense of the term, has any 
existence — he would have said no more than the testi- 
mony of consciousness fully warrants. But when he 
went a step beyond this, and not only doubted the exist- 
ence of matter but asserted its non-existence, he tran- 
scended the evidence of consciousness on the negative 
side, as much as his opponents did on the positive. If 
consciousness says nothing about the existence of mat- 
ter at all, we are equally incompetent to affirm or to 
deny. The sceptic, so long as he remains a mere scep- 
tic, is unassailable ; the dogmatist, whether in affirma- 
tion or in negation, equally dogmatises on the ground 
of his own ignorance. But, in admitting one portion of 
Berkeley's theory as perfectly tenable, we do not there- 
fore accept his entire system of idealism. It is quite 
possible to take an intermediate course ; to admit, witli 
Berkeley, that we have no right to assert the existence 
of any other kind of matter than that which is presented 
in consciousness ; but to deny his other main position, 
that we are conscious only of our own ideas. If, in any 
mode of consciousness whatever, an external object is 
directly presented as existing in relation to me, that ob- 
ject, though composed of sensible qualities only, is given 
as a material substance, existing as a distinct reality, 
and not merely as a mode of my own mind And to 



332 METAPHYSICS. 

this extent the arguments of Reid and his followers, 
however inaccurate their analysis of consciousness may 
be in some of its details, are valid against idealism. 

The antagonism of the Scottish philosophers to the 
theory of Berkeley arose more on account of its sup- 
posed remote consequences, than of its immediate con- 
clusions. It was supposed to furnish a legitimate foun- 
dation for the scepticism of Hume, who argued against 
the existence of mind on the same grounds on which 
Berkeley had denied the existence of matter. Within 
myself, he urged, I am conscious only of impressions 
and ideas, as in external sensation I am conscious only 
of extension, figure, and so forth. The substance called 
mind may therefore be a mere fiction, imagined for the 
support of the internal states of which I am conscious, 
just as the substance called matter is imagined for the 
support of sensible qualities. * But, in order that this 
conclusion may legitimately follow from Berkeley's prin- 
ciples, we must concede an additional premise, which 
Berkeley by no means admits,+ namely, that the evidence 
of consciousness in relation to matter and to mind is of 



* See Treatise of Human Nature, part iv. sees. 5, 6. 

+ In the third dialogue between Hylas and Philonous, Berkeley 
expressly says : — " I know or am conscious of my own being ; and that I 
myself am notmy ideas, but somewhat else, — a thinking, active principle, 
that perceives, knows, wills, and operates about ideas. " Here he dis- 
tinctly denies the position of Locke, and refutes by anticipation Hume's 
deduction from his own principles. 



ONTOLOGY. 333 

precisely the same character. If, as Locke maintained, 
and as the antagonists of Hume allowed, we have no 
immediate consciousness of self, but only of its several 
modes, the sceptical conclusion necessarily follows ; and 
Hume, as a professed sceptic, had nothing to do with 
correcting the received dogmas of philosophy, but only 
with exhibiting their ultimate consequences. Those 
consequences can only be refuted if, by a more exact 
analysis of the facts of consciousness, it can be shown 
that the personal self, as the one permanent subject of 
various successive modes, is directly presented in intui- 
tion along with its several affections. But this analysis 
neither Pieicl nor Stewart attempted ; and the conse- 
quence was, that in their hands the sceptical argument 
remained, in its main positions, unrefuted. 

In the fourth place, it may be shown, by the same 
consideration, that the Real of Consciousness is not the 
First Matter of the peripatetic philosophy ; that is to say, 
an universal substratum, common to all objects of sense, 
and subject to the changes of form which constitute this 
or that definite object.* This first matter is, indeed, 
nothing more than the matter of the last hypothesis, 
stripped of some of its more glaring incongruities, but 
not thereby made more accessible to conscious 
The theory of a first matter avoids, indeed, the absurdity 

* Aristotle, Phya, An.sc. [. 7. Compare Harris, FhtioaopMad Ar- 
rangements, chap. iv. 



334 METAPHYSICS. 

of saying that any one particular thing, such as a bil- 
liard-ball, is something distinct from its own sensible 
qualities ; but the supposition which it assumes instead 
— that of a subject which is all things in capacity, and 
nothing actually — is only a more logical negation of all 
difference, and therefore of all consciousness ; for con- 
sciousness is possible only through difference. The psy- 
chological value of the axiom on which this theory 
apparently rests — namely, that all things are changed, 
and nothing created or destroyed ; so that the quantity 
of real matter in the world can never be conceived as 
increased or diminished — has been examined in a pre- 
vious passage ; but even if a greater amount of truth be 
assigned to this principle than our previous remarks 
have accorded to it — whether it be regarded as a law, 
or merely as an impotence of mind — it is at any rate a 
phenomenon of mind and not of matter : it can be ex- 
plained on psychological grounds only ; and it presents 
no fact in the constitution of things, but only a mode of 
our conceiving them. Unless the truth of that concep- 
tion can be guaranteed by a positive intuition of its ob- 
ject, which in this case is impossible, we are not war- 
ranted in elevating a mere consciousness of the limit of 
our own powers of thought into a measure of the condi- 
tions of all possible existence. 

In the fifth place, the Eeal of Consciousness, so far 
as the material world is concerned, is not to be found in 



ONTOLOGY. 335 

the simple Elements into which bodies may be ulti- 
mately resolved. It does not express any metaphysical 
distinction to say that what appears to he air is in 
reality oxygen and nitrogen ; or that water, ice, and 
steam are but different appearances of the same ele- 
mentary particles. This is perfectly true as a physical 
fact ; but it contributes nothing towards the solution of 
any problem of metaphysics. The chemical element, as 
well as the compound, is an object of sense, and its pre- 
sence must be tested by sensible criteria. If, then, there 
is any apparent antagonism between sense and thought ; 
if there is any room for doubt whether what sense 
gards as a reality independent of myself, thought may 
not resolve into a transitory affection of my own mind ; 
such a doubt is equally possible, whether the object 
of sense be more or less minute, whether its presenc 
manifested by the immediate evidence of sight, or by the 
indirect test of experiment. In one respect, indeed, the 
chemical element has less of the character of a real ob- 
ject than the compound into which it enters : inasmuch 
as its presence must frequently be inferred rather than 
perceived — detected in its effects on something else, not 
in its own proper nature. There will still remain the 
question, "What is the thing itself, as distinguished from 
the test by which we discover its presence on particular 
occasions ? 

In like manner, it may be shown, lastly, that the 



336 METAPHYSICS. 

metaphysical question is in no way simplified by any 
theory, such as that of Boscovich, which regards the 
senses as immediately cognisant, not of Matter in itself, 
but only of the attractive and repulsive Forces which 
one particle exercises on another. For the ultimate 
atoms of matter being, upon this hypothesis, never pre- 
sented in consciousness, could never have given rise to 
the distinction, which apparently exists in our minds, 
between the real and the phenomenal. That distinction 
must be suggested by something of which we are con- 
scious ; and if we are conscious only of forces, it must 
depend upon some difference in the forces themselves. 
The forces thus inherit all the metaphysical difficulties 
of the matter which they represent ; and we must still 
have recourse to the analysis of consciousness itself, to 
determine in what manner the metaphysical doubt could 
have originated, and what are the data available for its 
solution. To inquire into the truth and value of Bosco- 
vich's theory itself, is a question of Physics, not of 
Metaphysics. 

OF THE REAL AS GIVEN IN CONSCIOUSNESS. 

Having thus simplified the problem by the elimina- 
tion of foreign elements, we have next to inquire what 
is the positive testimony of consciousness itself, as 
regards the existence of a distinction between the 
phenomenal and the real, and how far the distinction 



ONTOLOGY. 337 

thus indicated will enable us to asceitain the nature of 
the respective objects to which it refers? for that the 
distinction has a foundation in consciousness, however 
much its meaning may have been misinterpreted, is 
manifest, if it were only from the existence of such mis- 
interpretation. Rightly or wrongly, men have thought 
that such a distinction exists — why they have thought 
so, the examination of consciousness itself can alone 
explain. 

It is necessary, in the first place, to determine 
clearly what it is of which we are in search. We must 
know what is meant by reality, and what by ajyccirancc, 
before we can classify the facts of consciousness as indi- 
cating one or the other. For here there is an ambi- 
guity which, if not cleared up at the outset, may confuse 
the whole subsequent inquiry. It is one thing to dis- 
tinguish between the real and the phenomenal, as ex- 
hibited in the facts of consciousness themselves ; it is 
another to determine what are really facts of conscious- 
ness and what are not. There are judgments which are 
sometimes supposed to rest on the immediate testimony 
of consciousness, but which, rightly interpreted, are in- 
ferences only remotely suggested by it. I think I see 
a friend at a distance ; on a nearer approach he turns 
out to be a stranger. Here the apparent testimony of 
sight is in reality an inference pursued through many 
successive stages. In the first place, I am nut really 

z 



338 METAPHYSICS. 

conscious by sight of the presence of a distant object at 
all, but infer its presence from the consciousness of cer- 
tain affections of the organ of vision. In the second 
place, when I have projected by association the impres- 
sion of a certain coloured surface into a space exterior 
to my organism, I do not thereby know that this surface 
is a man ; this is a second inference, implying memory, 
and comparison, and recognition of certain specific attri- 
butes. In the third place, when I have so far obliterat- 
ed these connecting-links as to fancy that I see a man, 
I do not thereby know a friend from a stranger ; this is 
another act of inference, implying memory of certain 
individual features, and comparison of them with my 
present impression. Yet all this is performed with such 
rapidity as to appear an immediate act of perception ; 
and John or Thomas is, in ordinary apprehension, as 
much an object of sight as redness or blueness. 

This distinction is irrelevant to our present inquiry. 
When we ask how reality and appearance may be dis- 
tinguished from each other by the testimony of con- 
sciousness itself, it is to be supposed that we have 
already ascertained what are facts of consciousness, and 
what are not. But this being granted, a second ground 
of distinction presents itself. Every fact of conscious- 
ness, as such, guarantees the existence of its object, so 
long as it is actually present. But there are some facts 
of consciousness which are instinctively acknowledged 



OXTOLOGY. 339 

to indicate only the relative and transitory existence of 
their objects, and there are others which are supposed to im- 
ply something more than this. An affection of the nervous 
organism exists only as it is felt, and ceases to exist 
when it is felt no longer ; it has no independent exist- 
ence of its own, but is a mode of my being, created 1 >y 
the act of consciousness, and ending along with it. But, 
on the other hand, all men instinctively believe, and 
will believe in spite of the arguments of the idealist, 
that we are immediately conscious of an external world, 
and that that world exists when we are not conscious 
of it. The impression which the sight of a mountain 
makes on my optic nerve is destroyed when I shut my 
eyes ; but no man believes that the mountain is 
destroyed along with it. Consciousness testifies that 
we have this belief; and on this testimony metaphysi- 
cal systems have been built, which, however widely 
some of them may have wandered from the true solu- 
tion of the question, all alike prove that the question 
itself is suggested by consciousness. 

This latter description properly belongs to Onto) 
the former to Psychology ; though, in actual discussion, 
the two have been frequently mixed together. Among 
the facts, or supposed facts, of consciousness, the im- 
pressions of the senses, from the one or the other of the 
above points of view, have been, almost from the com- 
mencement of philosophy, especially noted as indicating 



340 METAPHYSICS. 

appearance and not reality. The following may be 
cited among the arguments adduced in proof of this 
position : — In the first place, sensation is but the result 
of a transitory relation between the organ and its object ; 
— colour, for example, exists neither in the eye by itself 
nor in the visible object by itself, but is produced by 
their temporary juxtaposition.* In the second place, 
the same object presents different impressions to the 
same sense, according to the condition of the sensitive 
organ itself, t A man with the jaundice sees all objects 
as yellow : one afflicted with colour-blindness sees as 
blue that which, in a healthy state of the eyesight, 
appears as red : to a diseased palate the taste appears 
bitter which a sound palate receives as sweet. But if 
the abnormal state of the organs of sense produces an 
impression which is acknowledged to be apparent only, 
why should the normal state be regarded as giving a 
knowledge of reality? If the unusual appearance is 
wholly dependent on an extraordinary condition of the 
organism, is not the usual appearance equally depend- 
ent on the ordinary condition? And how can either 
of them represent a real object, which in itself is unaf- 
fected by any change in the condition of the person per- 
ceiving it ? In the third place, the same object presents 

* Plato, Theatetus, pp. 153, 156. 

f Plato, Theatetus, p. 159. Pyrrho apud Laert. ix. 82. Sext. 
Empir. Pyrrh. Hyp. i. 100. 



ONTOLOGY. 341 

a different quality to different senses. An apple, for 
instance, is perceived by the sight as yellow, by the 
taste as sweet, by the smell as fragrant* If the several 
objects of sense are distinct realities, the apple is not one, 
but many ; if, on the contrary, the apple is, as we are 
compelled to conceive it, one, it follows that the impres- 
sions of the senses are not real things, but unreal appear- 
ances of that which in itself is not diverse but uniform. 
In the fourth place, the same object presents different 
impressions to the same sense, according to the different 
circumstances in which it is placed. A tower, which at 
one distance appears to the eye as square, at another 
seems to be round ; at one distance it appears larger, at 
another smaller.t But the tower itself undergoes no 
change of figure or size. It is manifest, therefore, that 
one at least of these impressions exhibits not that which 
is, but that which seems to be ; and unless some reason 
can be assigned for preferring one to the other, we may 
reasonably conclude that both do so. In the fifth plaee, 
the sensible impression may take place without the pre- 
sence of any external object by which it can be caused 
Such is the case in dreams and spectral illusions, in 
which we appear to see, with all the vividness of actual 

* ?yrrho apud Laerfc ix. 81. Sext. Empir. Pyrrh. Hyp. i. '.">. Cf. 
Plato, Sophistes, p. 251. 

f Pyrrho apud Laerfc ix. 85. Sext Empir. Pyrrh. Hyp, i. 118. 
Hume, Essay <>n tin- Academical Philosophy, 



342 METAPHYSICS. 

sight, things which have no existence except in our own 
imagination.* But if this actually takes place in some 
instances, why may it not take place in all ? By what 
criterion are we to distinguish the true from the false ; 
or how can we be sure that the senses present to us real 
objects, when their testimony can be so well counter- 
feited by mere phantoms ? 

These difficulties are considerably increased, if we 
adopt, with the vast majority of philosophers in ancient 
and modern times, the representative theory of percep- 
tion, and maintain that like can only take cognisance of 
like, and therefore that the mind, which is the seat of all 
consciousness, perceives through the senses, not material 
objects, but only its own ideas, by which material 
objects are represented. For how are we to guarantee 
that the idea has any resemblance to the object which it 
represents? To know that two things resemble each 
other, I must compare them together. But the material 
world, according to this hypothesis, is never perceived 
at all, and therefore cannot be compared with its sup- 



* Plato, Theatetus, p. 157. Pyrrho apud Laert. ix. 82. Sext. 
Empir. Pyrrh. Hyp. i. 104. We have not noticed those arguments 
which are drawn from the comparison of one man with another, or of 
men with brutes. We are treating only of the distinctions indicated by- 
consciousness ; and we have no access to the consciousness of any other 
creature than ourselves. A complete account of the earlier and later 
tropes of scepticism is given by Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrh. Hyp. i. 36, 164. 
See also Hegel, Geschichte der Philosophic Werke, xiv. p. 491. 



ONTOLOGY. 343 

posed representative.* And the ideas, whether regarded 
as immaterial objects distinct from the percipient mind, 
or as modifications of the mind itself, are called into 
existence in and by the act of perception, and have no 
existence except when they are perceived.t On this 
hypothesis we are not warranted in affirming the exist- 
ence of that of which we are never conscious ; and the 
conclusion to which it naturally leads is that which 
denies the existence of matter, and makes the whole 
external world a series of phenomena dependent on the 
action of the mind. 

Such are a few of the grounds on which philoso- 
phers in all ages have maintained that the senses arc 
the sources of deception, not of truth, and are conver- 
sant with appearance only, not with reality. And a more 
accurate acquaintance with the physiology of the sensi- 
tive organs confirms the latter part of this verdict, 
though it furnishes a defence against the former. The 
senses do not deceive us with regard to an external 
world, because, rightly interpreted, they tell us nothing 
at all about it. AVe are deceived, not in the facts to 

* Sext. Empir. Pyrrh. Hyp. ii. 74. Berkeley, Human Knowledge 
part i. sect. 8 ; Cousin, Coicrs de 1829, Lecon 21. 

t Berkeley, Human Knowledge, part i. see. ."» ; Dialogues between 
Hylaa and Phtflonoue, Dial. ii. Berkeley goes so far as to deduce from 
this position an argument for tin- being of God; on the ground that the 
world cannot have a continuous existence, except in BOOM Continuously 
percipient mind. 



344 METAPHYSICS. 

which the senses bear witness, but in the inferences 
which we draw from them. The colour and the savour 
appear different in different states of health, because, in 
truth, as affections of the nerves of sight and taste, they 
are different in different conditions of the organism. 
The sensible qualities of a body are in fact, as they 
appear to be, distinct affections of the several organs ; 
and it is not sense which tells us that these different 
qualities constitute a single thing. The tower which 
appears to change its shape and size as we approach it, 
is not in reality the same visible object at any two steps 
of our progress. What we actually see at any moment 
is nothing but the rays of light in contact with the organ 
of vision ; and every change of position places us in 
contact with a different complement of rays. The dream 
or the spectral apparition is as veritable an affection of 
the optic nerve as the commonest impression of sight ; 
and we err only in inferring the presence of an external 
object, of which the sight itself in no case tells us any- 
thing. But while we may thus defend the senses 
against the charge of deception, we are in another respect 
compelled to acknowledge that their objects are not 
things but phenomena. An affection of the nerves of 
sense is not a distinct reality existing independently of 
myself; it is but a transitory mode of my own con- 
sciousness, which exists only while I am conscious of it. 
A real object is not dependent for its being and proper- 



ONTOLOGY. 345 

ties on my being aware of them ; it has an existence and 
attributes of its own, whether I am at this moment con- 
scious of them or not. But the proper objects of the 
bodily senses — colours, sounds, flavours, savours, and 
tactual sensations — exist, as such, only in my con- 
sciousness, and cease to exist when my consciousness 
ceases. They may be caused by some permanent reality 
or realities independent of me ; but of the existence and 
nature of this reality the senses tell us nothing. 

It is not, therefore, to the senses, properly so called. 
that we must look for the distinction between Reality 
and Appearance in the material world. The only attri- 
bute of matter which these make known to us is the ex- 
tension of our own organism ; and, with regard to this. 
the distinction in question has no place. Were the 
senses the only channels of communication between 
mind and matter, Ave could never have thought of asking 
how much of that communication is real, and how much 
phenomenal. "Whether my nervous organism exists, as an 
extended substance, out of the act of perception in which 
its extension is manifested, is a question which could 
never have arisen from the act of sensitive perception 
alone ; for, in order to ask such a question, 1 musl fiisl 
be enabled to separate in thought the object of percep- 
tion from the act of perceiving it, and thus to constitute 
it an extra-organic reality ; and to do this, the extra- 
organic world must first be presented in some form of 



346 METAPHYSICS. 

intuition. Apart from the associations which the senses 
derive from this intuition, all modes of perception would 
be regarded as equally real, or equally phenomenal ; for 
the real and the phenomenal could never have been 
conceived as contrasted with each other. 

The analysis of the facts of external intuition, which 
has been given in the preceding pages, will enable us to 
ascertain the meaning of the distinction, and to deter- 
mine the limits within which the question which it raises 
can be intelligibly answered. Eesistance to the locomo- 
tive energy is the only mode of consciousness which 
directly tells us of the existence of an external world ; 
and the attributes which are made known to us in that 
relation are the only ones which are directly given as 
constituting a material reality. These attributes are 
occupation of space, implying size and figure : and resist- 
ance, more or less stubborn, implying the impossibility 
of two bodies occupying the same place. And these 
are, in fact, the tests of reality to which we instinctively 
appeal on all occasions, even where the circumstances of 
the case do not permit their actual application. A body 
is necessarily conceived as in space, and an external 
body as in a space exterior to our organism. This im- 
plies the occupation of a portion of space, which is size, 
and the limitation by surrounding space, which is figure. 
But I may not be able, in particular cases, to verify this 
conception by any empirical test. I may be placed 



ONTOLOGY. 347 

blindfold against a Avail, of which I am not able to feel 
the extremities. I cannot therefore pronounce empiri- 
cally, either directly, from contact, or indirectly, from 
sight, that it is limited in its length and height, or that 
it is square, or circular, or of any other known figure. 
But I am compelled to believe that it has a definite size 
and figure, and that I should be able to feel them if I 
were in some other position. Again, a volume of smoke 
may offer no perceptible resistance to the motion of my 
arm. But here, again, I am compelled to believe that it 
offers some resistance, which, with more acute faculties, 
I should be able to perceive ; for I cannot conceive 
myself as placing my hand in the midst of the smoke 
without displacing the particles with which it comes in 
contact. The atmosphere, whose ordinary pressure, like 
the music of the spheres, is unperceived because it is 
always present, exerts, as is well known, a resistance as 
great as 15 lbs. on the square inch ; and wherever a body 
penetrates, it produces during its occupation an atmo- 
spheric vacuum. A body, then, ia presented as real when 
it actually offers resistance to the locomotive effort ; it 
is represented as real when we believe that it would n 
if we were in a position to make the al tempt. By tin's 
test the objects of the senses are instinctively, and often 
unconsciously, judged. The visible and tangible im] 
sions, which are usually accompanied by the apprehen- 
sion of resistance, are regarded, first, as Bigns of the 



348 METAPHYSICS. 

presence of a real object, and afterwards as real objects 
themselves ; and the sight of the sun in the sky gives us 
a conviction of its independent existence, as firm as if 
we could feel it supporting our tread. But that this 
conviction is indirect, not immediate — the result of asso- 
ciation, not of original intuition — is evident from the 
fact that, when the association is broken, the belief in 
the reality of the object is instantaneously destroyed. 
Let an object be given as visible but unresisting, and it 
is at once acknowledged to exist in appearance only, and 
not in truth : — 

" Ter conatus ibi collo dare brachia circum ; 
Ter frustra comprensa manus effugit imago, 
Par levibus ventis volucrique simillima sorano."* 

These lines express the instinctive belief of all man- 
kind in the true criterion of material reality — a belief 
which is justified and explained by the testimony of 
consciousness read by the light of psychological re- 
search. 

OF THE REAL IN COSMOLOGY. 

The above observations may furnish materials for a 
criticism of that branch of Metaphysics known as Cos- 
mology, or the Ontology of the material world. They 
will serve to point out what are the facts of conscious- 
ness which give rise to the conception of such a science, 

* Virgil, Mn. ii. 792. 



ONTOLOGY. 349 

and what are the limits within which that conception 
can be realised. The conception of reality in material 
objects is derived from the consciousness of extension 
and resistance in conjunction ; and the philosophy of 
the real, in this department, has no legitimate field be- 
yond the several conditions and relations of these attri- 
butes, as presented in various modes of experience. Its 
object, therefore, is not a supersensible world lying be- 
yond the facts of consciousness, but the sensible world, 
in those properties which are primarily and directly 
made known to us as modes of resistance to the locomo- 
tive energy, such as gravity, cohesion, repulsion, motion, 
and their various subdivisions. Its method is not de- 
monstrative, except in so far as the mathematical attri- 
butes of pure extension are applicable hypothetically to 
extension in conjunction with resistance. In the verifi- 
cation of this hypothesis in any particular case, and in 
those researches which belong to its own province, it 
deals with matters of fact ; and matters of fact cannot, 
as such, be matters of demonstration. This limitation is 
confirmed, on further consideration, by those facts of 
consciousness which at first seem to point to a contrary 
conclusion — the necessary principles and reasonings of 
geometry. For these have been shown to depend <>n 
certain forms or conditions of experience, derived from 
the constitution of the mind itself, and to imply the 
existence of nothing but a conscious mind, modified in a 



350 METAPHYSICS. 

certain manner. Of the real existence of its object 
geometrical reasoning tells us nothing ; but only that, 
on the supposition of its existence,, certain properties 
may be proved to belong to it ; — the proof, however, 
being equally valid whether the supposed existence be 
in fact or merely in imagination. The test of the real 
existence of matter is resistance, without which extension 
alone is not conceived as an external reality : and to the 
modes of resistance, as such, the demonstrations of geo- 
metry are not applicable. 

The above conception of Cosmology is, it must be 
confessed, very different from that which metaphysicians 
in general have attempted to realise. Indeed it may be 
regarded by some as indicating rather a physical than a 
metaphysical system ; and this charge must be admitted, 
if the science of Physics is viewed in its most general 
extent, as embracing the universal properties of matter 
in general, as well as the special characteristics of this 
or that body.* P>ut the fault, if it be one, lies, not in the 
conception, but in the facts of human nature on which 
it is founded. If our faculties are so limited as to 
present us only with physical attributes of matter, the 
Metaphysics of matter can contain nothing more than 

* According to Aristotle (De Anima, i. 1), physical philosophy is 
concerned with the special operations and attributes of this or that body 
as such {trepi airavd" 1 oaa rod roiovdl aib/nciTOS Kal ttjs ToiauTrjs CX^s Zpya 
Kal irddrj). If this definition be accepted, the attributes common to all 
bodies may be properly referred to a more general branch of philosophy. 



ONTOLOGY. 

the principles and results of Physics in their m< 
red extent. We may regret, if we please, the limitation, 
and sigh for a knowledge of a hyperphysical world : but 
our faculties do not convey such a knowledge, and all 
our sighing will not make them do so. The limitation 
is one which our Creator has thought fit to impose upon 
us, and, regret it as we may, we cannot escape from it. 

But a philosophy which fails to solve, and even re- 
fuses to grapple with, certain problems, may vindicate 
itself by explaining why they are insoluble. Before 
quitting the subject of Cosmology, it is necessary to point 
out in what respects the above sketch falls short of the 
highest conception of a metaphysical system, and why it 
does so. In the first place, it starts from the apprehen- 
sion of matter as extended, and does not attempt to solve 
the higher difficulty involved in the notion of extension 
itself. Extension cannot be regarded as the unit of 
material reality ; for it is dependent on a juxtaposition 
of parts whose reality cannot consist merely in their 
combination. Extension is a relation between pari 
exterior to each other; and a relation implies things 
related, which must be real in themselves, else no reality 
could result from their combination. This difficulty, 
with all the accompanying paradoxes involved in the 
infinite divisibility of matter, is abandoned as insoluble: 
and it is obvious why it is so. If space is a necessary 
form of intuition, involved in the laws of our mental 



352 METAPHYSICS. 

constitution, it follows that, to explain the generation of 
space itself, we must go out of our constitution. To 
conceive the ultimate reality on which extension de- 
pends, I must conceive the non-extended becoming 
extended — a conception which is impossible ; first, 
because thought is only operative within the limits of 
possible intuition, and we can have no intuition of unex- 
tended matter ; secondly, because, to conceive a relation 
between the unextended and the extended, I must be 
able to compare them together ; and to do this I must 
be in and out of my mental constitution at the same 
moment. An ultimate unit of space is thus as incon- 
ceivable as a first instant of time ; and for the same reason 
— because both space and time are necessary forms of 
intuition. In the second place, the riddle which has 
puzzled the metaphysicians of all ages still remains 
unanswered : — " How can the one be many, or the 
many one ?" In other words, " How can a variety of 
attributes constitute a single object ?" This problem 
also is insoluble ; and for a like reason — because con- 
sciousness cannot account for its own laws. If conscious- 
ness is limited, the existence of that limit implies the 
existence of something of which we are not conscious ; 
and this is equally true of the limits of intuition and of 
those of thought. Now, it is a necessary condition of 
conception, as has been already shown, that its object 
must comprehend a plurality of attributes ; — in other 



ONTOLOGY. 353 

words, that thought is impossible except under the con- 
dition of diversity in unity.* To explain why this is so 
would be to explain why our minds are constituted as 
they are ; and this involves a criticism of the laws of 
thought themselves. But such a criticism manifestly 
destroys itself ; for it can only be carried on by thought 
operating under the very laws whose validity is ques- 
tioned. Whatever doubt, therefore, can be raised con- 
cerning the object of criticism must likewise affect the 
critical process itself Wherever, therefore, we fix the 
limits of thought, something must remain inexplicable. 
From this we cannot escape, except by denying that 
thought has limits ; and this denial again annihilates 
itself ; for if thought has no limits, nothing is unthink- 
able ; and if nothing is unthinkable, nothing is absurd ; 
and if nothing is absurd, no system of philosophy is 
more reasonable than another, and the denial of limits is 
not more true than the assertion of them. In the third 
place, metaphysical philosophy is admitted to be con- 
cerned, not with matter as it is, but with matter as we 
conceive it ; and this admission, too, is a necessary con- 
sequence of the laws of consciousness, in its manifesta- 
tion, as a relation between a subject and an object. We 
cannot compare the object of consciousness with a thing 
of which we are not conscious ; for comparison itself is 
an act of consciousness ; we can only compare one 

* See above, pp. 192, 209. 
2 A 



354 METAPHYSICS. 

object of consciousness with another — the permanent 
with the transitory, the necessary with the contingent. 
There still remains the question, "Do things as they 
are resemble things as they are conceived by us?" — a 
question which we cannot answer, either in the affirma- 
tive or in the negative ; for the denial, as much as the 
assertion, implies a comparison of the two * If, then, 
being is interpreted to mean the absolute beyond con- 
sciousness, and appearance the relative within it (an 
interpretation, however, which is not warranted by the 
analysis of consciousness itself), it must be admitted 
that the philosophy of the material world, in its highest 
form, is not Ontology, but Phenomenology. 

OF THE EEAL IN PSYCHOLOGY. 

This admission, however, cannot be extended to the 
second branch of the Metaphysics of Being, which deals 
with the internal consciousness and the personal self ; 
for here the interpretation on which it depends is utterly 
untenable. Psychology, like Cosmology, cannot tran- 
scend the limits of consciousness ; but in Psychology it 
cannot in any sense be maintained that the real is that 

* Kant maintains that the objects of our intuition are not in them- 
selves as they appear to ns {Kritik der r. V. Transc. iEsth. sec. 8). 
Here, however, the critic becomes a dogmatist in negation, and contra- 
dicts his own fundamental hypothesis ; for if things in themselves are 
absolutely unknown, how can we say whether they are like or unlike 
anything else ? 



OXTOLOGY. 

of which we arc not conscious. My own Conscious] 
is not merely the test of my real existence, but it actually 
constitutes it. I exist in so far as I am a person ; and 
I am a person in so far as I am conscious. AYere it 
possible, which it is not, to conceive the human soul as a 
substance of which consciousness is only an accidental 
mode — which may exist at one time in a conscious, and 
at another in an unconscious state — such a soul could 
in no sense of the term be called myself ; the various 
modes of its existence could in no sense be called % 
The Cartesian cogito, ergo sum, is so far from being, as its 
opponents have maintained, an illogical reasoning from 
a premise to its conclusion, that its only fault consists in 
assuming the appearance of a reasoning at all. My con- 
sciousness does not prove my existence, because it is my 
existence. Descartes does not intend, as Reid imagined, 
to reason from the existence of thought to the existence 
of a mind or subject of thought: he intends to state 
wherein personal existence consists ; and he rightly 
places it in consciousness, f The opinion of Locke,J that 

* Inquiry, chap. i. sec. 3. 

t See the dissertation offl. Cousin, " Sur le vr.ii Bens da 
swn," printed in the earlier editions of the i 
and in vol. i. p. 27, of the collectiye edition of his works. Thi 
position is well illustrated by Mr. Veitch in the introduction I 
translation of the Discown <>'<■ la M&hode, p. 22. Bee also / 
. 8, 9, .">;'>. There is a remarkable anticipation of tl. 
doctrine in St. Augustine, J >< ' Vr. Jj> i, xi. -JO. 

$ Essay, b. ii. ch. i. sec. 10. 



356 METAPHYSICS. 

the soul does not always think, is tenable only as a part 
of that false psychology which regards the soul as a 
substance projected, as it were, out of consciousness, the 
unknown substratum imagined as the support of known 
accidents.* If I am never conscious of myself, but only 
of my ideas, I can, of course, pronounce nothing con- 
cerning the conditions of my real existence ; but then, 
upon the same supposition, I could never have known 
that /am conscious, or that the ideas are mine. If there 
is nothing given in consciousness but ideas, there is no 
such thing as personal existence ; but only a multitude 
of isolated ideas, each conscious of itself. Put the 
question in another form : ask what is the evidence that 
I exist at all ; and I can only adduce the direct witness 
of consciousness. The existence of myself is a fact of 
consciousness, not an inference from it ; for an / must 
be presupposed to make the inference. The unconscious 

* Locke's assertion is but partially refuted by Leibnitz {Nouveaux 
Essais, ii. 1), who holds that, in sleep without dreams, the mind is in a 
state of obscure perception, not amounting to consciousness ; — an opinion 
which is also maintained by "Wolf, Psychologic*, Rationalis, sec. 59. 
But the opposite opinion, suggested by Aristotle (De Somno, c. i., 
t) cvfxj3aiv€L fikv del KadevdovcriP evvTrvidfav, d\X' ov [xvqiiovevovcnv), is 
adopted by some of the most eminent psychological and physiological 
writers of modern times, as confirmed both by a priori probability and 
by positive experience. (See Kant, Anthropologic, sees. 30, 36 ; Jouf- 
froy, Melanges Philosophiques, p. 290 ; Holland, Chapters on Mental 
Physiology, p. 80; Brodie, Psychological Researches, p. 147.) Some 
valuable remarks and illustrations of this position are contained in Sir 
W. Hamilton's Lectures on Metaphysics, Lect. xvii. 



ONTOLOGY. 857 

substratum of possible ideas may be a soul, in some 
arbitrary and unmeaning definition of that term ; but 
assuredly it is not myself. If we could suppose a 
human body growing up to maturity without conscious- 
ness, and a conscious principle afterwards infused into 
it, the body in its previous condition would be no more 
a part of myself than the limb which was amputated 
from me ten years ago, and which is now dissolved into 
its chemical elements. Yet the inquiry, how far per- 
sonality is diminished by amputation or increased by 
corpulence, is not more irrelevant than to ask when 
consciousness begins in a new-born infant or in the 
foetus in the womb. In so far as the rudiments of my 
body existed prior to the birth of consciousness, in so far 
they were not parts of myself : and I, as a person, had 
no existence. I hold that my personality is undimin- 
ished by the loss of a limb, simply because I am con- 
scious that it is undiminished ; and for the same reason 
I refuse to acknowledge that / existed in the rudi- 
mentary foetus, or in the germs from which it was 
formed, or in the organism of my remote ancestors* 

* " For aught I know," says Coleridge, " the thinking spirit within 
me maybe substantially one with the principle of life and of vital oper- 
ation, For aught I know, it may be employed as a a mdaxy agent in 

tli marvellous organisation and organic movements of my body. Bat 
surely it would be Btrange language to say thai / construct my I 
or that /propel the finer influences through my nerves/ or that I 
press my brain, and draw the curtains of sleep round my own < 
[Biographia Literaria, vol ii. p. 168, ed. 18 17.) 



358 METAPHYSICS. 

But when we place the personal existence in con- 
sciousness, it is necessary to distinguish between the 
accidents of consciousness and its essential constituents. 
A man who has lost his eyesight has in one sense less 
consciousness than he had before ; he has lost that 
portion which consists in the sensations of vision. But 
his personality remains undiminished by the loss either 
of the bodily organ or of the affections of consciousness 
which that organ communicates. The same may be 
said of the other bodily senses ; each of which may be 
conceived to be annihilated without any destruction of 
the personality of the conscious subject. This is the 
natural testimony of consciousness to the spirituality of 
man. We cannot help believing that the body and its 
organs, however necessary during the present life to 
certain modes of consciousness, however chronologically 
the occasion of the earliest development of consciousness 
in general, is yet no part of the conscious subject — is 
not, in any sense of the term, myself. And this instinc- 
tive conviction of the untaught consciousness of man- 
kind is further strengthened by all that science tells us 
of the constitution of the body and its organs. Of the 
animal body is emphatically true what Heraclitus and 
the general voice of philosophy after him declared of the 
objects of sense in general :* — it exists not, but is con- 
tinually being produced ; it no sooner comes into being 

* See Plato, Theatetus, p. 152-160 ; Arist. Metaph. i. 6 ; xii. 4. 



ONTOLOGY. 359 

than it ceases to be. At no two successive moments does 
it consist of exactly the same particles ; and during the 
course of a long life the entire system is many times 
destroyed and renewed again. Our whole physical 
existence is but a series of chemical changes ; " the 
solid," to quote the words of a recent writer,* " melting 
into the liquid, the liquid congealing into the solid ; 
whilst both stand so related to the air, which is the 
breath of life, that they are continually vaporising into 
gases." Yet amidst all these changes, the conscious 
subject, the personal self, continues one and unchanged 
A similar distinction between the accidental and the 
essential must be made with regard to the internal 
consciousness : the matter of that consciousness is con- 
tinually changing ; while the form abides permanent 
and immutable : emotions, thoughts, volitions, succeed 
one another at every moment : the self — feeling, think- 
ing, willing — is one and the same throughout. It is 
not necessary to my personal existence that I should 
feel joy or sorrow, anger or tranquillity ; for the calm 
man of to-day is the same as the angry man of yester- 
day ; and he who laughs to-day may weep to-morrow. 
Kay, more: not only is every special experience which 
constitutes the matter of consciousness alien to ami 
separable from the personality of the subject ; but even 
a portion of the form of consciousness must be regarded 

* Professor George "Wilson, in the Kdlabur<jh Baaays, p. 313. 



360 METAPHYSICS. 

as having in this relation only a hypothetical and 
secondary necessity. The intuition of space, though 
necessarily accompanying every perception of matter, 
whether in our own organism or in the exterior world, is 
yet necessary only so long as we are in the body and con- 
scious by the bodily senses. We cannot positively conceive 
a state of existence from which space is separated ; yet, 
on the other hand, we are compelled to believe that exist- 
ence in space is an attribute of body, and not of mind. 

But when all these are set aside, there yet remain 
two conditions which I conceive as essential to my 
personal existence in every possible mode, and such as 
could not be removed without the destruction of myself 
as a conscious being. These two conditions are time 
and free agency. To consciousness, in its limited and 
human form of existence (of the Divine Consciousness 
we are not entitled to speak), it is essential that there 
should be a permanent subject with a succession of 
modifications. The consciousness of any object, as such, 
is only possible under the condition of change ; and 
change is only possible under the condition of succession. 
Destroy this condition, and though I am not warranted 
in saying that no kind of consciousness can exist, I am 
warranted in saying that such consciousness could not 
be mine. That a being now subject to the law of suc- 
cession should be identical with one hereafter not so 
subject, implies a self-contradiction ; for it implies a 



ONTOLOGY. 301 

consciousness of the relation of present to past, and the 
absence of time, the basis of that relation. Succession 
in time is thus manifested as a constituent element of 
my personal existence, without which I could not be 
conscious of that existence; and, as consciousness is in 
this case reality, without which / could not exist 
Again, consciousness in its human manifestation im- 
plies an active as well as a passive element ; — a power 
of attending to the successive states of conscious 
as well as a succession in those states themselves. 
Attention appears to be necessary, not merely to the 
remembrance, but even to the existence of various states 
of consciousness as such ; — indeed, attention is but 
consciousness in operation upon some definite object.* 
But in attention we remark, obscurely, indeed, but cer- 
tainly, the presence, in a more or less obtrusive form, 
of the power of volition. It is impossible, indeed, to 
estimate by analysis the exact amount of will, in the 
strict sense of the term, that is implied in the ordinary 
cognition of objects ; the frequency of the act having 
obliterated the distinctive marks of its several elements, 
before w r e are capable of reflecting upon them : but its 
presence as a constituent element is not th ;irely 

implied, though it requires some research to disci i 
it. It is not going too far to say that, wit limit the con- 
scious exercise of volition, the distinction between the 

* See above, p. 13G. 



362 METAPHYSICS. 

permanent subject and its transitory modes, between 
myself and my affections, could never have arisen in the 
human mind ; and the consciousness of that distinction 
is even now observed to vary with the fact which gives 
rise to it, to become more or less vivid in proportion as 
the consciousness of voluntary action is more or less 
obvious. / am emphatically and prominently present 
to my own consciousness in the exercise of choice : 
those acts are peculiarly mine which are consciously 
imputable to me as their cause, and for which I feel 
myself responsible.* Volition is not, indeed, the whole 
of personality, but it is one necessary element of it ; — 
the consciousness of the one rising and falling with the 
consciousness of the other ; both more or less vividly 
manifested, as is the case with all consciousness, ac- 
cording to the less or greater familiarity of particular 
instances ; but never wholly obliterated in any ; — 
capable at any moment of being detected by analysis, 
and incapable of being annihilated by any effort of 
thought. That a conscious being can, under no possible 
conditions, be a merely passive link in the chain of 
causation is more than I can venture to assert ; but 
this much I know, that such consciousness could not 
possibly be my consciousness ; — that / could not be- 
come such a being, retaining my present personality 

* See on this point, Kant, Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen 
Vernunft, part i. sec. 1. 



ONTOLOGY. 3G3 

unimpaired ; but that I must be destroyed, and a dis- 
tinct being substituted in my place. The freedom of 
the will is so far from being, as it is generally con- 
sidered, a controvertible question of philosophy, that it 
is the fundamental postulate without which all action 
and all speculation, philosophy in all its branches, and 
human consciousness itself, would be impossible. 

The task, then, of the metaphysician, in this branch 
of his science, is to unravel and solve the difficulties 
which accompany the conception of Personality in its 
twofold character — that of existence in time, and that 
of free agency. The fact itself is in both cases equally 
indubitable : it is as certain, from the testimony of 
consciousness, that we are free agents, as that our ideas 
occur in succession, one after another. AVe are not 
called upon to account for this; — which would be to 
account for our own existence ; every attempt at which 
must manifestly assume the very fact which it prof< 
to call in question ; — but assuming this as the basis of 
consciousness, and, in consciousness, of persona] i 
ence, we must endeavour to meet the objection 
which it is apparently liable, and which will generally 
be found to arise from a misinterpretation ot the testi- 
mony of consciousness itsel£ For instance, it has been 
asked, How can a real thing exist in time? and if it 
does so, how can we be conscious of its existe] 
The earlier phases of its being have passed by, and 



364 METAPHYSICS. 

exist no more ; the future exists not yet ; the present is 
perishing as we contemplate it : How can these several 
phenomena make one thing? and if they can, how 
can we be conscious of it? To know that my past 
self is identical with my present, I must compare them 
together ; this is impossible, as they cannot be made to 
exist together. Nay, even to compare the thought of 
one with the thought of the other, I must contemplate 
them successively ; and thus each vanishes as the other 
presents itself* The answer to this objection may be 
furnished by a more accurate analysis of the idea of 
time itself. The consciousness of time does not simply 
imply succession : it implies a permanent subject under 
successive modifications. The object of consciousness 
can only be presented as successive, on the condition 
that the subject is presented as continuous. It is only 
when I become an object of consciousness to myself 
that I become a member of a successive series ; but in 
this case the object is not the presented self, but my 
representative conception of that self. My notion of my- 
self may alternate in consciousness with my notions of 
other things ; but it can do so only on condition that 
the 'presented self the subject, and not the object, of con- 
sciousness, remains one and indivisible. The subject, it 
is true, cannot be contemplated apart from its modifica- 

* See Herbart, Lehrbuch zur Einleitung in die Philosophie, sec. 
120, sqq. ; Hauptxmncte clcr Metaphysik, sec. 11. 



ONTOLOGY. 3C5 

tions ; for this would be to transform it from a subject 
to an object ; but the two elements are not the less 
clearly discerned in the relation of consciousness ; 
though they are discerned only in conjunction with 
each other. For this reason, the language which implies 
succession becomes obviously improper when applied to 
the subject of consciousness. I may speak accurately 
enough of my earlier and later thoughts or feelings ; 
but I cannot, with any philosophical accuracy, speak of 
an earlier and later self, even as a merely logical distinc- 
tion, for the sake of afterwards identifying the two. To 
identify is to connect together in thought objects of con- 
sciousness given nnder different conditions of space or 
time; as when I pronounce the man whom I met in 
the street to-day to be the same who called at my house 
yesterday. But myself, the subject of consciousn. 
never given under these different relations at all. It is 
that presentation from which our original notion of nu- 
merical identity is drawn, and which cannot be subjected 
to later and secondary applications of the same idea. 
These considerations may perhaps throw some light on 
the vexed question of personal identity—* question 
which can only be asked concerning the represented 
self, or notion made an object; and which cannol 
asked at all without presupposing the presented identity 
of the subject. 

A like answer may be made to the ol 



366 METAPHYSICS. 

free-will, drawn from the supposed necessity of a deter- 
mining antecedent in time. Consciousness, rightly in- 
terpreted, repudiates both the extreme theories ; that of 
an irresistible determinant, or set of determinants, and 
that of an arbitrary will, altogether uninfluenced by 
motives. Two alternative motives are manifested in 
consciousness as both influencing, but neither compel- 
ling ; and the freedom of the will consists, not in being 
absolutely uninfluenced, but in the power of determin- 
ing which of the two influences shall prevail. Of a 
temporal antecedent necessarily determining my voli- 
tions, consciousness tells me nothing ; — nay, it tells me 
the very reverse, that the influence of such an antece- 
dent is not necessary. It is only when the idea of voli- 
tion is excluded, and, w^ith volition, that of choice, and, 
with choice, that of contingence, that the temporal ante- 
cedent is transformed into a necessary determinant.* 
But this merely negative idea of necessity, which is, in 
fact, only an inability to conceive contingence, is de- 
rived solely from the absence of volition, and is inap- 
plicable where volition is present. The only positive 
notion which I possess of causative power is that of 
myself determining my own volitions. This notion pre- 
supposes the freedom of the person, and has no exist- 
ence whatever if that freedom be denied. To apply this 
notion in support of the hypothesis of necessity, is not 

* See above, p. 270. 



ONTOLOGY. 3G7 

only to go beyond, but actually to reverse the testimony 
of consciousness. It is, in fact, to say thai the con- 
sciousness of myself having absolute power over my 
own volitions is identical with the consciousness of 
something else having absolute power over me. 

But if w r e are conscious that we are free, we are free 
in reality; for, as regards the personal self, conscious- 
ness is reality. In this respect the Ontology of the 
personal self, which stands in the place of the rational 
Psychology of the pre-Kantian metaphysics, occupies a 
very different position from the Ontology of the material 
world, which inherits the unsolved problems of rational 
Cosmology. The latter science, in its only attainable 
form, is but a Phenomenology of a higher order. It 
can distinguish between the permanent and the transi- 
tory attributes of matter relatively to conscious" 
but it is compelled to admit the possible existence of 
a further material world of things, of which we are not 
conscious, and which may or may not resemble the 
objects of which consciousness, and, through conscious- 
ness, philosophy, takes cognisance. Put, as regards 
myself, this supposition is inadmissible. I exist as a 
person only as I am conscious of myself; and I am 
conscious of myself only as I exist. The consciousness 
of Personality is thus an Ontology in the highest sense 
of the term, and cannot be regarded as the represen- 
tation of any ulterior reality. The neglect of this dis- 



368 METAPHYSICS. 

tinction forms the weak point in the otherwise masterly 
discussions of Kant on the antinomies of pure reason. 
Denying the existence of an immediate consciousness 
of self, and holding, as all who deny this must do, that 
the freedom of the will is incompatible with exist- 
ence in time, he endeavoured to save liberty itself, and, 
through liberty, morality, by a distinction between the 
phenomenal self of consciousness, and a real self, of 
which we are not conscious. The self of consciousness, 
he said, is a phenomenon existing in time ; and, as such, 
is necessarily determined by antecedent phenomena. If, 
then, phenomena were things in themselves, freedom 
would be impossible. But beyond the field of con- 
sciousness there must exist a transcendental self, the 
ground and support of the phenomena ; and to this 
transcendental subject, as under no conditions of time, 
we may legitimately attribute a power of self-determin- 
ation, or free causality. To this attempted solution 
obvious objections may be raised. In the first place, it 
may be urged that our real personal existence is the 
existence of consciousness ; and no higher guarantee of 
reality can be admitted. The self of consciousness is the 
true self : that which is beyond consciousness, if such 
can be supposed, is in this case the phenomenon. In 
the second place, we are not compelled in thought to 
postulate the existence of any transcendental self at all ; 
for consciousness itself presents the permanent subject 



ONTOLOGY. 3G9 

of its own phenomena. In the third place, liberty is so 
far from being incompatible with consciousness, that it 
is directly given in consciousness itself ; for I am imme- 
diately conscious that the temporal antecedents of my 
volition exercise no coercion upon it. Kant's solution 
is, in fact, the very reverse of the truth : — it is the self 
of consciousness which is really free : the hypothesis of 
necessity can only be maintained by the gratuitous sup- 
position of a law of causality beyond consciousness, by 
which I am determined without knowing it. Such a 
perversion of the truth, on the part of so profound a 
thinker, can only be explained as a consequence of that 
suicidal position maintained as a canon of psychology 
by the philosophers of the last century ; namely, that I 
have no immediate consciousness of myself, but only of 
my successive mental states — a position which can only 
be described as one among many pernicious results of 
that reaction of physical upon mental science which, 
under the abused name of inductive philosophy, was 
permitted to poison with its crude analogies the very 
fountain and source of philosophy itself. The same 
consciousness which tells me that I am compelled to 
believe in the existence of a material world when I am 
not directly conscious of it, tells me also that 1 am 
directly conscious of myself, and that I exist in and by 
that consciousness. To overlook the distinction thus 
clearly laid before us is to confound with each other the 

213 



370 METAPHYSICS. 

two poles of speculative philosophy, the subject with the 
object, the necessary with the contingent, the permanent 
with the transitory, the ego with the non-ego. 

Beyond the attributes manifested by consciousness 
as essential to personality, the Ontology of the soul 
has no province. It cannot assume those attributes as 
the basis of any further demonstration ; for the prin- 
ciples of demonstration are inapplicable to real objects. 
Neither the simplicity of the soul nor its immortality 
can be demonstrated as a necessary truth ; for they are 
not implied in the conception of personality, and beyond 
that conception we have no intuition of necessary rela- 
tions. The favourite representation of the soul as a 
simple substance, indivisible, and therefore indestruc- 
tible, is one which, except so far as it is synonymous 
with continuous existence in time, is either untrue or 
unmeaning. If interpreted to mean that the concep- 
tion of personality comprehends only a single attribute, 
it is untrue ; if intended to state that the soul is not 
composed of parts coadjacent in space, it is unmeaning 
except on the principles of materialism. A material 
atom is an intelligible expression, whether the object 
which it denotes is conceivable as really existing or not. 
A mental atom is as utterly unmeaning as the opposite 
expression of a mind composed of atoms.* Immor- 

* The only legitimate argument from the simplicity of the soul to its 
immortality is of a purely negative character. We are not authorised to 



ONTOLOGY. 371 

tality, again, however surely guaranteed upon other 
grounds, cannot be represented as a necessary attribute 
of personal existence. That which did not exist once, 
may, without any absurdity, be supposed not to exist 
hereafter. The power which was sufficient to create is 
also sufficient to destroy ; and if man is destined to 
exist for ever, it is from no inherent immortality of his 
own, but solely because such is the will of his Maker. 
That we are designed for a future life, may indeed be 
inferred from the direct testimony of consciousness, in 
so far as it reveals the existence within us of feelings 
and principles which do not find their full satisfaction 
in this life; but this inference, however legitimate, does 
not fall within the province of Metaphysics. 

OF THE REAL IN THEOLOGY. 

In treating of the third branch of Ontology, that of 
Rational Theology, it is necessary to take a different 
course from that adopted by the majority of those meta- 
physicians who have attempted theological reasonh g 
at all. In the number of these, however, we cannot 

say that we know the soul to he simple, and that therefore it is ind 
tible ; hut only that we do not know the soul t<> be compound > : 
that the epithets compound and simple, as applied to the soul, lu 
meaning), ami, therefore, that we cannot infer its mortality from 
analogy of bodily dissolution. And this is, for the most part, the limit 
within winch tin- argument is confined by one of the soberest as well is 
deepest of thinkers, the admirable Bishop Butler. The majority of 
philosophers, however, have not been bo cautious in their reasoning. 



372 METAPHYSICS. 

include those philosophers, whose systems, however 
veiled under the language of theism, or even of Chris- 
tianity, exhibit a conception of the Deity which vir- 
tually amounts to pantheism. A personal God cannot 
be identified with all existence ; and an impersonal 
Deity, however tricked out to usurp the attributes of 
the Godhead, is no God at all, but a mere blind and 
immovable law or destiny,* with less than even the 
divinity of a fetish, since that can at least be imagined 
as a being who may be offended or propitiated by the 
worshipper. But, however much we may sympathise 
with the purpose of those philosophers who have 
endeavoured to demonstrate, a priori, the existence and 
attributes of a personal God, we cannot help feeling that 
such demonstrations, whatever may be their apparent 
logical validity, carry no real conviction with them to 
the believer or to the unbeliever, f And the reason of 
this is not far to seek. No demonstration from concep- 
tions can prove the real existence of the object con- 
ceived ; and, till this is done, the demonstration of the 
attributes of a hypothetical object proves no more than 

* See Kant, Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des Daseyns Gottes, 
Vierte Betrachtung, sec. 3. 

f For a criticism of some of the principal demonstrations of this 
kind, see Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Abth.^iii. B.lii. Hauptst. 3. 
The same grounds of objection are also applicable to other reasonings of 
this kind. Compare Waterland's Dissertation on the Argument a priori 
for a First Cause. 



ONTOLOGY. 373 

the connection between certain thoughts in our own 
minds.* The actual existence of an object can never 
be shown by thinking about it; for imaginary objects 
are as capable of being represented in thought as real 
ones. Beality must be tested, not by thought, but by 
intuition : we must be able to point to certain facts of 
consciousness in which the object of which we are in 
search is actually presented before us ; or, at least, 
which can only be accounted for on the supposition 
that such an object exists. But this argument from 
the facts of intuition is not a 'priori, but a posteriori : 
it does not commence with a general conception, in 
order to exhibit by analysis the subordinate concep- 
tions comprehended in it, or to construct in imagination 
a corresponding object ; but it starts from certain facts 
of experience, manifested in the outer or inner con- 
sciousness, in order to determine the nature of the 
object which those facts present or point out to us. 

We must therefore begin our inquiry by asking, 
What are the facts of consciousness which appeal 
directly to indicate the existence of a spiritual being 
superior to ourselves ? Two of the intuitions of the in- 
ternal consciousness appear especially to possess this cha- 
racter : — the sense of dependence and il of moral 
obligation. To these must be added, as an indirect and 
collateral witness, the cons • of limitation, which, 
* See above, p. 279. 



374 METAPHYSICS. 

by suggesting, though not immediately presenting, the 
unlimited as its correlative, serves in some degree to 
interpret and connect the other two. The argument 
from causation, through holding an important place 
among the evidences of natural religion, can hardly be 
placed among those direct indications of consciousness 
which come within the legitimate province of Meta- 
physics. We are immediately conscious, indeed, of the 
necessity of supposing a phenomenal antecedent to every 
event ; but we are not immediately conscious of a 
necessity of conceiving that the series of phenomena is 
limited or unlimited. Nay, rather, we are conscious of 
two counter inabilities, which hinder us from conceiv- 
ing either an absolutely first cause, or an absolutely 
unlimited series of causes and effects.* We have thus 
two contradictory hypotheses, one of which must be 
believed, though neither can be comprehended ; and 
the evidence of reason being thus neutralised, we are 
bound to adopt that alternative which is most in har- 
mony with the remaining testimony of consciousness. 

* The counter arguments on either side are exhibited by Kant, in his 
first antinomy of pure reason. The same conclusion, however, is evident 
without argument, from the direct testimony of consciousness. For to 
conceive an absolutely first member of the causal series is to conceive a 
beginning of all time, and thus to be conscious of a relation of time 
to an object out of time, and therefore out of consciousness ; and to 
conceive an infinite series of causes and effects, we must carry our 
thought through an infinite succession of objects — a j)rocess which 
would require an infinite time to accomplish it. 



ONTOLOGY. S7fi 

But in so doing, we obey a moral, not an intellectual 
obligation ; and our conviction, as far as the argument 
from causation alone is concerned, is not that of reason, 
but that of faith. The conclusion from the evidences of 
design in the works of creation, which is but a special 
form of that from causation, is likewise not an imme- 
diate suggestion of consciousness, but the gradual 
product of experience and comparison, arguing by ana- 
logy from what we have learned concerning the works 
of man, to what we may infer concerning the works 
of God. Such arguments have great value in their own 
place, as illustrative of, and auxiliary to, the convictions 
forced npon ns by onr religious and moral instincts ; 
but they are based npon reflection, not upon intuition ; 
and, though they may serve to enlarge our conception 
of the Deity when once formed, they do not explain its 
origin and formation. 

The province of the metaphysical theologian is con- 
fined to those evidences which belong to the direct 
testimony of the intuitive consciousness, as man if 
in the feelings of dependence and moral obligal ion The 
feeling of dependence is something very different from 
the mere recognition of the relation of subject to object 
in consciousness, and of the consequent limitation of the 
one by the other* It is a feeling that OUI welfare and 

* In consequence of not distinguishing between these two, Schleier- 
macher {Dcr Christliche Glaube, sec, -i) has fallen into the o i 



376 METAPHYSICS. 

destination are in the hands of a superior Power ; not of 
an inexorable fate or immutable law, but of a Being 
having at least so far the attributes of personality that 
He can show favour or severity towards those dependent 
upon him, and can be regarded by them with the feel- 
ings of hope, and fear, and reverence, and gratitude, and 
be addressed in the words of prayer and praise. It is a 
feeling similar in kind, though higher in degree, to that 
which is awakened in the mind of the child by his 
relation to his parent, who is first manifested to his 
mind as the giver of such things as are needful, and to 
whom the first language he addresses is that of entreaty. 
With the first development of consciousness, there grows 
up, as a part of it, the innate feeling that our life, 
natural and spiritual, is not in our own power to prolong 
or to sustain ; that there is One above us on whom we 
are dependent, whose existence we learn, and whose pre- 
sence we realise, by the sure instinct of prayer. That 
this feeling is natural to us, is manifested by the uni- 
versal practice of mankind ; — every nation, however 
degraded may be its form of religion, having some 
notion of a superior being, and some method of propi- 

senting our relation to the world as a feeling of partial dependence, and 
our relation to the Deity as one of absolute dependence. Thus repre- 
sented, God can no longer be conceived as a person, but is nothing 
more than the world magnified to infinity ; and the feeling of absolute 
dependence becomes the annihilation of our personality in the being of 
the universe. Of this feeling, the intellectual exponent is pantheism. 



ONTOLOGY. 377 

tiating his favour. We have thus, in the sense of 
dependence, the pyschological foundation of one great 
element of religion — the fear of God. 

But the mere consciousness of dependence does not 
in itself exhibit the character of the Being on whom we 
depend. It is as consistent with superstition as with 
true religion — with the belief in a malevolent as in a 
benevolent deity ; it is as much, if not more, called into 
exercise by the painful and terrible aspects of nature as 
by the pleasing and encouraging. It indicates the power 
of God, but not necessarily his goodness. This defi- 
ciency, however, is supplied by the other psychological 
element of religion, the consciousness of moral obli- 
gation. It is impossible to maintain, as Kant lias 
attempted to do,* the theory of an absolute autonomy of 
the will ; that is to say, of an obligatory law resting on 
no basis but its own imperative character. The will, or 
practical reason, with its law of immutable obligation, is 
in itself a fact of the human constitution, and it is no 
more. Kant's fiction of an absolute law, binding upon 
all rational beings whatever, has only an apparent uni- 

* See Mdaphystkder Slffm (Abschn, ii. pp. 61, 71, ed. Rosenk 
Thus refusing to acknowledge an intuition of God as i moral la* 
Kant is compelled to real the evidence of the existence of the I 
on an assumed necessity of rewarding men according t<> their dest 
necessity which implies an all-wise judge who ■■mi estimate merit in 
every degree. For an able criticism of Kantfa theory, Bee Mull< 
tlui Christian Doctrbiu of Sin (vol i. p. 7:?, of the English translation). 



378 METAPHYSICS. 

versality, because we can only conceive other rational 
beings by identifying their constitution with our own, 
and making human reason the measure and representa- 
tive of reason in general. Why, then, has one part of 
my constitution, as such, an imperative authority over 
the remainder ? What right has one part of the human 
consciousness to represent itself as duty, and another 
merely as inclination? There is but one answer pos- 
sible. The moral reason, or will, or conscience — call it 
by what name we please — of man, can have no authority, 
save as implanted in him by some higher spiritual 
being, as a law emanating from a lawgiver. Man can 
be a law unto himself only on the supposition that he 
reflects in himself the law of God. If he is absolutely 
a law unto himself, his duty and his pleasure are 
undistinguishable from each other ; for he is subject 
to no one, and accountable to no one. Duty itself 
becomes, in this case, only a higher kind of plea- 
sure — a balance between the present and the future, 
between the smaller and the larger gratification. We are 
thus compelled, by the consciousness of moral obliga- 
tion, to postulate a moral Deity, and to regard the abso- 
lute standard of right and wrong as constituted by the 
moral nature of that Deity.* The conception of this 

* The theory which places the standard of morality in the Divine 
nature must not be confounded with that which places it in the arbitrary 
will of God. On the latter, see the remarks of Sir James Mackintosh, 
Second Dissertation, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 8th edition, vol. i. p. 312 ; 



ONTOLOGY. 379 

standard in the human mind may indeed be faint and 
fluctuating, and must be imperfect ; it may vary with 
the intellectual and moral culture of the nation or the 
individual ; and in its highest human representation it 
must fall far short of the reality. But it is present in all 
mankind, as a basis of moral obligation and an induce- 
ment to moral progress ; it is present in the universal 
consciousness of sin — in the -conviction that we are 
offenders against God. However degrading may be t lie- 
practices into which men have fallen, under systems of 
false religion, it may be safely asserted that no man, 
and no nation of men, ever consciously deified vice as 
such. The voluptuous deities of the pagan mythol igy 
were deified as regards their enjoyments, not as regards 
their vices : their acts were contemplated as divine, not 
because they were breaches of morality, but because the 
worshipper falsely conceived them to be ingredients of 
happiness. The god of a nation of savage warriors may 
delight in revenge and bloodshed; but the supposed 

ami of Miiller, Christian Voctrimof Sin, vol. i. p. !'.">. God <li<l not 
create morality by his will : it is inherent in his nature, and coeternal 
with Himself; nor can He be conceived as capable of reversing it. Bat 
God did in one sense create human morality, when He created tie i 
constitution of man, and placed him in certain eircum • b as 

those of mortality, of property, ofsexual relation, etc., through which 
the eternal principles of morality are manifested in relation to this 

present life. On the foundation of morality in tin- natur- . 

Cudworth, Treatise Coneerning Msrnal and Immutal . b. i. 

ch. iii. ; b. iv. eh. iv. v. vi. 



380 METAPHYSICS. 

divinity of his acts does not consist in their cruelty : 
they are attributed to him because their infliction is an 
evidence of superiority ; perhaps, also, because their 
endurance is a test of heroism. Even the worship of an 
evil principle is a worship of power, not of vice. He 
causes vice in man, but he is not himself vicious ; for 
he transgresses no higher obligation of his own nature. 
He is worshipped, not as a moral governor to be obeyed, 
but as a malignant influence to be appeased ; and thus 
he is not, in the proper sense of the term, God ; for his 
worship implies no duty of imitation or service.* The 
Deity, however falsely conceived, still represents a moral 
standard in the minds of his worshippers : the idea of the 
perfect goodness of God, as implied in the imperfect 
goodness of man, may be corrupted and degraded, but 
is never wholly extinguished. The consciousness of 
right and wrong, of duty and disobedience, even in its 
most perverted form, involves the consciousness of a 
Being to whom duty and obedience are due ; whose 
nature, however imperfectly represented, is necessarily 
conceived as moral ; and whose commands, emanating 
from that nature, are manifested in the authority which 
they communicate to the moral principle in man. 

But though we have thus the direct testimony of 
consciousness to the existence of a supreme Being, on 
whom our life and welfare depend, and from whom our 

* •Compare Hegel, Philosophie der Religion (IVerke, xii. p. 173). 



ONTOLOGY. 581 

moral obligations emanate, the Being thus manifested 
does not yet realise the full idea of the Deity. For 
neither in dependence nor in moral obligation can we 
have an immediate intuition of the Infinite. The de- 
pendent is not absorbed in that on which it depends : 
the consciousness of our personal existence is not anni- 
hilated when we feel its relation to a higher power. 
Self and not-self still divide the universe of existence 
between them ; and neither can be regarded as exhaust- 
ing it.* But that which coexists with the finite cannot be 

* Schleiermacher {Der Christliche Glaube, sees. 4,5) maintains a dif- 
ferent view. He resolves the religious consciousness into a feeling of 
absolute dependence, in which the consciousness of our own individuality 
and activity in relation to a distinct object of consciousness disappears 
in that of a passive relation to the infinite God. In this view he is fol- 
lowed by Mr. Morell, who says that man, " in the presence of thai which 
is self-existent, infinite and eternal, may feel the sense of freedom utterly 
pass away, and become absorbed in the sense of absolute dependence "' 
(Phitosojihy of Religion, p. 75). Without dwelling on the difficulties and 
apparent contradictions involved in the notion of an absolute dependence 
which is, at the same time, a relative consciousness, this theory appears 
to be open to one fatal objection ; namely, that it makes OUT moral and 
religious consciousness subversive of each other, and reduces us to the 
dilemma that either our faith or our practice must be founded on I 
delusion. The actual relation of man to God is the same, in whatever 
degree man may be conscious of it. If man's dependence upon God is 
really not destructive of his persona] freedom, the religious conscious- 
ness, in denying that freedom, is a false consci o usn e ss. If, on the con- 
trary, man is in reality passively dependent upon God, the, a 
of moral responsibility, which bears witness to bis free agency! is a 
lying witness. When Schleiermacher assumes the existence of three 
degrees of consciousness — 1. Thai of the infant, in which there is no 
conscious distinction of the subject from its object ; 2. The middl 



382 METAPHYSICS. 

itself positively conceived as infinite ; otherwise the in- 
finite and the finite together must be conceived as greater 
than the infinite. Nor yet can the finite be conceived 
as merged in the infinite ; for this would be to conceive 
myself as existing and not existing at the same time. 
In like manner, it is impossible to conceive an infinite 
moral nature : for each moral attribute, as coexisting 
with others, limits and is limited by the rest ; and 
the very conception of morality implies law, and 
law is itself a limitation. Yet, on the other hand, w T e 
cannot escape from the conviction that the infinite does 
in some manner exist, and exists, though w 7 e know not 
how T , along with the finite ; and though we can form no 
positive conception of its nature, we cannot regard the 
limits of our conception as the limits of all possible 
existence. We know that, unless we admit the exist- 
ence of the infinite, the existence of the finite is inexpli- 
cable and self-contradictory ; and yet we know that the 



of distinct relation between self and not-self ; and 3. The highest or reli- 
gious consciousness, in which the relation again disappears — he overlooks 
the fact that the second and third are not successive stages in the mental 
development, but must alternate with each other during a man's whole 
life ; the one presiding over his moral duties, and the other over his reli- 
gious feelings. On what ground is one of these states to be regarded as 
higher than the other, except in so far as it more truly reveals to us our 
actual state in the sight of God, as free or absolutely dependent ? And 
as this state must be always the same, whether we are conscious of it or 
not, it follows, that in proportion as one of these states reveals to us the 
truth, the other must be regarded as testifying to a falsehood. 



ONTOLOGY. 

conception of the infinite itself appears to involve con- 
tradictions not less inexplicable. In this impotence of 

reason we are compelled to take refuge in faith, and to 
believe that an infinite being exists, though we know 
not how, and that he is the same with that being who 
is represented in consciousness as our sustainer and our 
lawgiver. For the contradictions involved in the denial 
of the infinite are positive, and definitely Belf-destruc- 
tive ; as we directly conceive the universe as limited, 
and yet as limited by nothing beyond itself; whereas 
the contradictions involved in the assumption thai 
infinite exists are merely negative, and might be soluble 
in a higher state of intelligence ; as they arise merely 
from the impotence of thought, striving to reduce under 
the conditions of conceivability that which is beyond Its 
grasp. Thus they are not contradictions manifested in 
the infinite itself, but only limitations in our power i 1 
comprehension. We are compelled, therefore, by reason 
as well as by faith, to acknowledge that the infinite 
must exist ; though how it exists, reason Btrives in 
to fathom, and faith rests content with the duty of be- 
lieving what we cannot comprehend. 

Hence we are compelled to admit that Theolo 
well as Cosmology, viewed as a branch of philosophy, i- 
not a true Ontology, but only a higher kind of Phenomen- 
ology. We believe in the existence of an infinite Grod : 
and we know also that we cannot conceive Him M in.,- 



384 METAPHYSICS. 

nite. Our highest conception of the Deity is still 
bounded by the conditions which bound all human 
thinking, and therefore cannot represent the Deity as He 
is, but only as He appears to us. Such a representation, 
though sufficient for all the practical purposes of reli- 
gion, is unable to satisfy in full the demands of a philo- 
sophical curiosity. But a sounder and more sober 
philosophy will tell us why those demands cannot be 
satisfied ; — why the highest problems of speculative 
theology must and ought to be abandoned as insoluble. 
It tells us that our whole consciousness is relative, and 
therefore cannot comprehend the absolute; that our 
whole consciousness is limited, and therefore cannot 
comprehend the infinite. It tells us that a compre- 
hended infinite could be no infinite at all ; for compre- 
hension itself is a limitation ; and the unlimited must 
necessarily be the incomprehensible. To know God as 
He is, man must himself be God. The pantheist accepts 
this position, and identifies the Divine mind with the 
universal consciousness of mankind. The theist accepts 
it also, and is content to worship where he cannot 
understand. 

If this limitation of philosophical theology be ad- 
mitted, the ground of many a controversy, and the root 
of many a heresy, is cut from under it at the very com- 
mencement of inquiry. In acknowledging the exist- 
ence, and at the same time the incomprehensibility, of 



ONTOLOGY. 385 

the infinite, we at once confess that, we have sufficient 
grounds for belief, but not for theory. If we have no 
conception of the infinite attributes of God as such, we 
may not so interpret those attributes as to place them 
in antagonism, either to the direct testimony of con- 
sciousness, or to the plain language of Scripture ; nor 
yet," on the other hand, can we distinctly shew their 
compatibility with either, though we are bound to 
believe it. How, for example, can we reconcile man's 
free-will with God's foreknowledge ? Bather, why should 
we attempt to do so, when in the attempt we must needs 
substitute our limited conception of the Divine nature 
for that nature as it is ? We know not how an infinite 
intelligence contemplates succession in time ; we know 
not whether his consciousness is subject to the law of 
succession at all. Eternity, in relation to the Divine 
mind, may be, as the schoolmen said, a nunc stans, in 
which there is no distinction of past, present, and future. 
Foreknowledge may be merely a means of accommodat- 
ing the representation of Divine Omniscience to human 
faculties. To speculate in any direction — to adopt a 
theory of scicntia media on the one hand, or of absolute 
predestination on the other — is to deify our own ignor- 
ance ; to make the human conception the measure of 
the Divine reality. Why, again, cannot we conceive 
infinite power as undoing that which is already done. 
If the sun has risen this morning, why can we not con- 

2 C 



386 METAPHYSICS. 

ceive that even Omnipotence can now cause that it shall 
not have risen ? Simply because we cannot conceive 
infinite power at all ; — the limitation is not of omnipo- 
tence in itself, but of all power as the object of human 
thought. How, again, can we reconcile the exercise of 
two Divine attributes with each other ? How can infi- 
nite mercy pardon every sin, and yet infinite justice 
exact the utmost penalty ? How can we tell, when we 
can conceive justice and mercy only in their finite forms, 
as they are capable of existing in human consciousness? 
It is obvious how the same principles may be applied to 
controversies concerning those deeper mysteries of the 
Christian faith which rest on the evidence of revelation 
only. But into this sacred ground it would be foreign 
to our present argument to enter. 

OF THE REAL IN MORALITY. 

The Ontology of Morals is subject to the same limit- 
ations with that of Eeligion. If the standard of perfect 
and immutable morality is to be found only in the 
eternal nature of God, it follows that those conditions 
which prevent man from attaining to a knowledge of the 
infinite as such, must also prevent him from attaining 
to more than a relative and phenomenal conception of 
morality. And, in truth, man's moral, like his religious 
consciousness, will vary according to his state of mental 
and moral culture : he may have higher or lower ideas 



ONTOLOGY. 387 

of duty, as he may have higher or lower ideas of God. 
But it does not therefore follow, as was maintained by 
the sophists of old, that each man is the measure of all 
things to himself, and that morality is nothing more 
than the law which any man or nation chooses to enact 
for a certain time within a certain sphere * The very 
expressions a higlier and a lower standard, imply that 
there are degrees of right and wrong, even in relative 
and limitedmorality ; — that one human conception of 
duty may be more perfect than another, even if none 
can attain to absolute perfection. There is such a thing 
as an enlightened and an unenlightened conscience ; 
though no man may presume to say that his own con- 
science has attained to the greatest amount of enlighten- 
ment of which even human nature is capable. It is a 

* So far from it, that the above ground is constantly taken by the 
antagonists of the sophistical doctrine, for the express purpose of refut- 
ing it. Thus Plato, in the Dialogue especially devoted to the refutation 
of the dogma of Protagoras, that " man is the measure of all things," as- 
serts that some portion of evil must needs exist in our mortal nature, and 
that we must endeavour to escape from it by an imitation, according to 
our power, of the Divine justice and holiness (Thcatctus, p. 176). And 
Aristotle, after stating, as opposed to his own view, the sophistical posi- 
tion that all justice, is conventional and variable, remarks — kclLtoi 
irapd ye rots deoh taws ovdafids (Eth. Kic. v. 7). Even the comic poet, in 
his Dialogue between the Unjust and the Just Discourse, representing 
respectively the sophists and their antagonists, puts into the mouth pf 
the latter the ^\ww argument : — 

AA. ovbk yap elvai irdvv (pyfxl Slktjv. 

AI. ovk elvai <£t/s ; A A. <f>ipe yap, irou '<ttiv ; 

AI. -napa rolai deoh. ^Aristoph. j\ r nbcs, 902.) 



388 METAPHYSICS. 

mark of the progressive character of natural morality and 
religion, that no new advance in knowledge contradicts 
the principles which have previously been acknowledged 
by the conscience, however much it may modify the par- 
ticular acts by which those principles are to be carried 
out. To be zealous in God's service is a principle of 
religious duty common to Saul the persecutor and to 
Paul the apostle ; though its result in action is at one 
time to destroy the faith, and at another to preach it. 
And it is a mark of the same character, that each fresh 
advance in moral and religious knowledge carries with 
it the immediate evidence of its own superiority, and 
takes its place in the mind, not as a question to be 
supported by argument, but as an axiom to be intuitively 
admitted. Each principle of this kind recommends it- 
self to the minds of all who are capable of reflecting 
upon it, as true and irreversible so far as it goes ; though 
it may represent but a limited portion of the truth, and 
be hereafter merged in some higher and more compre- 
hensive formula. The principles, for example, that 
virtue, relatively to the human constitution, consists in 
observing a mean between two extremes, or in promot- 
ing the good of others, or in a reasonable self-love, all 
represent views containing a portion of truth ; though 
none can be considered as exhausting the whole truth. 
While human nature is complex in itself, and suscep- 
tible of various relations and various duties arising out 



ONTOLOGY. 389 

of those relations, it is not to be expected that all human 
virtue should be reducible to a single attribute, or ca- 
pable of expression in a single formula. Yet its general 
character is not therefore doubtful because it admits of 
being viewed in various special aspects. Two men 
who differ in their definition of virtue will yet generally 
be agreed as to who is the virtuous man. " Let me die 
the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like 
his," expresses the conviction of one who, though far 
from righteous himself, was yet compelled to acknow- 
ledge the existence of a higher human standard than his 
own rule of conduct,* "As much as it has been dis- 
puted," says Bishop Butler, " wherein virtue consists, or 
whatever ground for doubt there may be about particu- 
lars ; yet in general there is in reality an universally 
acknowledged standard of it. It is that which all ages 
and all countries have made profession of in public : it 
is that which every man you meet puts on the show of : 
it is that which the primary and fundamental laws of all 
civil constitutions over the face of the earth make it 
their business and endeavour to enforce the practice of 
upon mankind : — namely, justice, veracity, and regard to 
common good."t 

Nevertheless, there is an useful lesson to be drawn 
from the frequent fluctuations of men's moral theories 

* See Bishop Butler's Sermon on the Character of Balaam. 
t Dissertation on the Ndturt of Virtue. 



390 METAPHYSICS. 

as well as from the general agreement of their practical 
confessions. It is not unnsual for philosophers to reason 
as if they were possessed of an absolute, and not merely 
of a relative standard of morals ; — as if they had attained 
to the conception of eternal morality, as it exists in the 
nature of God, instead of to that temporal manifestation 
of it which is adapted to a particular state of the consti- 
tution, and stage of the progress, of man. The works in 
which Kant and Eichte have attempted to construct an 
a 'priori criticism of revelation, upon moral grounds, are 
remarkable instances of this departure from the limits 
of all sound philosophy.""" Both assume that the sole 
purpose of revelation must be to teach them morality ; 
and both assume that the morality thus taught must be 
identical to the minutest particular with the system at- 
tained by human philosophy ; — which last is supposed 
to be absolutely infallible. Hence Kant maintains that 
the revealed commands of God have no religious value, 
except in so far as they are approved by the moral rea- 
son of man ; and Fichte lays down, among the criteria 
of a possibly true revelation, that it must contain no in- 
timation of future reward or punishment, and must 
enjoin no moral rules which cannot be deduced from 
the principles of the practical reason. Whereas, in truth, 
the principles of the practical reason are susceptible of 

* See Kant's Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft. 
and Fichte's Versuch einer Kritik alter Offenbarung. 



ONTOLOGY. 391 

additional enlightenment with every stage of man's pro- 
gress in this life (and it may be also with every stage of 
his progress in the life to come), and revelation, in two 
sentences, has conveyed to us a principle of human 
morals, which the philosophy of ages had toiled after in 
vain, and which the philosophy of a later day has been 
content to borrow without acknowledgment, and to per- 
vert in attempting to improve : — " Thou shalt love the 
Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, 
and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind ; and 
thy neighbour as thyself." * 

OF THE EEAL IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF TASTE. 

With the Ontology of Morals is not unfrequently as- 
sociated that of Taste. The good and the beautiful were 
in the Greek language often expressed by the same word ; 
and are by many regarded as alike expressing absolute 
and immutable principles, equally independent of human 
opinion, and equally objects of philosophical inquiry. t 
But, in truth, the object of the so-called Philosophy of 
^Esthetics appears, even in its highest form, to have far 

* See Kant's criticism and attempted explanation of these precepts, 
Kr'dil ilrr -praktischcii Vcmunft, B. i. Hauptst. iii. (p. 209, ed Rosen- 
kranz). 

+ See especially M. Cousin's Lectures, Du Vrai, du Beau, ct du 
Bicn, where abeolute beauty is referred to the same Divine standard with 
absolute goodness and absolute truth : and so Hutcheson entitles his 
treatise An Inquiry into the Original of our Idem of Beauty and Virtue. 



392 METAPHYSICS. 

less of an absolute and immutable character than be- 
longs to the objects of Metaphysical inquiry, even within 
the limits to which they have been confined in the pre- 
ceding pages. The beauty of an object appears to 
depend, not so much on the character of the object it- 
self, as on the feeling of pleasure which it excites in 
the spectator ; and this, again, on the accidents of his 
present constitution * This appears to be the case even 
with the moral beauty of an action, when that quality 
is viewed apart from the other ingredients of its moral 
character. The consciousness that a certain action is 
morally pleasing to me is not necessarily connected with 
that of its moral rectitude ; though the two have fre- 
quently been confounded together in the various theories 
concerning the moral sense.f But it is easy to conceive 
that moral obligation might remain undiminished, even 
if no gratification were derivable from the observance 
of it ; while, on the contrary, it seems impossible to 
conceive the existence of an obligation to be pleased 
apart from the apprehension of the moral character of 
the act. The beauty of sensible objects appears to ex- 

* See Kant, Kritik der Urtheilskraft, sees. 1, 6, 15 [WerTce, iv. 
pp. 46, 56, 76). The sublime, as well as the beautiful, is admitted by 
Kant to be not a quality of things, but a feeling of our superiority over 
nature (Ibid. sec. 28, p. 122). Some masterly remarks on the nature 
and origin of our feelings of pleasure, in relation to the beautiful and the 
sublime, will be found in Sir W. Hamilton's Lectures on Metaphysics, 
Lect. xlvi. 

t See above, p. 163. 



ONTOLOGY. 393 

hibit still more fully the marks of a merely phenomenal 
and relative character. A slight change in the shape 
and refractive power of the eye would alter all our per- 
ceptions of the form and colour of objects, and, with 
them, the impressions of beauty and deformity derived 
from this source. And if the senses themselves are con- 
fined to the apprehension of phenomena, how can the 
beauty of the objects of sense lay claim to a higher char- 
acter? Can we then assert that sensible beauty is a 
reflection and imitation of ideal beauty, in the same 
manner and degree in which our perceptions of moral 
duty aim at and imply a divine standard of right and 
wrong ? Even the fluctuation in the opinions of vari- 
ous individuals and nations, though far from being a 
decisive criterion in any case, appears to be acknow- 
ledged by the general sense of mankind to be a test 
more conclusive in questions of taste than in those of 
truth or rectitude. The very name taste seems to imply 
something subjective, and, to a considerable extent, arbi- 
trary. The maxim, (l Be gustibus non disputandum est" 
may be the exaggerated expression of a popular convic- 
tion ; but, at any rate, it carries no such shock to the 
natural feelings of mankind as does the sophistical as- 
sertion that the distinctions between truth and falsehood, 
virtue and vice, are based on convention, and not on 
nature. Nor is it difficult to detect the foundation of 
truth which underlies the exaggeration. The maxim is 



394 METAPHYSICS. 

true, in so far as it virtually asserts that beauty is sub- 
jective, not objective ; an affection of the person who is 
conscious of it, existing only in and by that conscious- 
ness, not a permanent quality existing in things, and 
capable of being expressed by a general notion * But 
it is exaggerated, in so far as it apparently denies the 
existence of a common sense of beauty, among men of 
cultivated minds, by virtue of which similar affections 
will be produced in different minds by the same object.-]- 
But this admission, while it saves the standard of taste 
from the charge of arbitrariness and instability, at the 
same time removes the philosophy of taste from the 
province of Ontology, and limits it to a Psychological 
investigation of those relations between the imagination 
and the understanding which give rise to the conscious- 
ness of beauty in an object actually present.]: 

* See Kant, KritiJc der Urtheilskraft, sec. 17 ( Werke, iv. p. 81). 

+ See Kant, Kritik der Urtheilskraft, sees. 6, 22. Kant resolves 
the feeling of beauty into an indefinite consciousness of fitness with re- 
ference to an end (Zweckmassigkeit), but without the representation of 
any definite end. He admits, however, that this consciousness is merely 
subjective, and that there can be no objective rule, capable of determin- 
ing beauty by conceptions. Similarly Jouffroy, in his Cours d'Esthe- 
tique, regards the feeling of beauty as a sympathy with the expression 
of active force (as distinguished from inert matter) developing itself in 
conformity with its end. Here, again, the action of the force is not 
perceived in the object, but supplied by the imagination of the spec- 
tator. 

X See Kant, Kritik der Urtheilskraft, sec. 34. 



ONTOLOGY. 395 



CONCLUSION. 



We have thus indicated, rather than discussed, some 
of the manifold aspects of the great fundamental pro- 
blem, which, various in its external forms, but one in its 
real import, has stimulated the researches of thoughtful 
men in all ages, under the names, used for the most part 
synonymously, of First Philosophy, Ontology, or [Meta- 
physics : — the problem, namely, to distinguish that 
which is from that which seems to he. Whether we look 
to its earliest definite statement, in the dogma of Par- 
menides, that Being is one and unchangeable, and that 
variety exists only in the fancy of men ; or to the boast 
of Zeno, that he would explain all things, if there were 
only given to him the One ; — whether we examine 
Plato's conception of the science of Dialectic, as that 
which contemplates real existence by the aid of the pure 
intellect, illuminated by the brightness emanating from 
the essential form of good ; or ask the question which 
the same philosopher describes as embracing at once 
the deepest mysteries of philosophy and the pettiest 
quibbles of sophistry, How can the one be many or the 
many one ; — whether we adopt Aristotle's definition of 
the First Philosophy, as the science which contemplates 
being as being, and the attributes which belong to it as 
such ; or, with Descartes, assume the fact of our own 



396 METAPHYSICS. 

personal existence, manifested in consciousness, as the 
one primary and • indubitable truth; — whether, with 
Leibnitz, we regard the sensible world as composed of 
an aggregate of unextended monads or metaphysical 
points ; or, with Kant, divide objects into noumena and 
phenomena, things as they are in themselves and things 
as they are related to human faculties ; or, with Fichte, 
postulate the existence of an absolute self, implied by, 
though not given in consciousness, or, with Schelling, 
attempt by intellectual intuition to reach the point of 
indifference in which the relations of subject and object 
are merged in the identity of both ; or, with Hegel, 
found a philosophy on the hypothesis of an absolute 
thought, identical with absolute being, and susceptible 
of development into the various modes of personal and 
impersonal finite existence ; or, with Herbart, find a 
common object of all metaphysical inquiries in the so- 
lution of the contradictions which present themselves in 
experience ; in all these, and other different statements, 
we recognise only verbal varieties of one and the same 
fundamental distinction ; — a distinction wdiich, however 
perverted in artificial systems, must have a natural ori- 
gin in the human mind ; which must be given in one 
mode of consciousness, or else it could not have been 
invented in any. 

We have endeavoured to ascertain the primary and 
preservative fact of consciousness in which this distinc- 



ONTOLOGY. 307 

tion is given, — a fact upon -which all the secondary and 
representative varieties of it must be based ; and thus 
to fix the limits within which a Science of Being is 
possible and beyond which it cannot be carried. This 
fact seems to be discoverable in the relation between a 
permanent self and its successive modifications, which 
forms the condition of all human consciousness. If 
this be admitted, Ontology, in the highest sense of the 
term, becomes identified with Psychology ; and the future 
task of the metaphysician will consist in exhibiting the 
conditions involved in the idea of personal existence, 
and solving the difficulties to which that idea appears 
to give rise. To attempt to accomplish this task in de- 
tail would require a far greater space, and a more 
minute examination, than is possible within the reason- 
able limits of a work like the present. We must con- 
tent ourselves with having pointed out the fact that 
such problems exist, and stated the reasons for believing 
that they are not to be abandoned as insoluble. 

Beyond the range of personal existence we have no 
positive conception of real being, save in the form of 
those more permanent phenomena which constitute our 
general conceptions of certain objects, as distinguished 
from the transitory phenomena with which those con- 
ceptions are at certain times associated. Here Ontology 
is but a higher kind of Phenomenology : its object is not 
a tiling in itself, but a thing as we are compelled to con- 



398 METAPHYSICS. 

ceive it : and to attempt to give to this branch of 
philosophy a more absolute character is to substitute 
negative ideas for positive— to desert thoughts, and to 
take refuge in words which have no real meaning, save 
in relation to a different mode of consciousness. We do 
not, therefore, attempt to solve the higher problems of 
Cosmology and Theology, nor even to indicate the condi- 
tions under which they might be solved. But we have 
attempted to shew why they are insoluble, and what is 
the origin of that delusion which has led men in various 
ages to fancy their solution possible, and to devise sys- 
tems for accomplishing it. The failures of great minds 
are often not less instructive than their successes ; and 
the time that is spent in wandering among the mazes of 
Metaphysical speculation will not be wholly lost, if it 
teach us that knowledge which it is the end and aim of all 
sound philosophy to inculcate, — the knowledge of our- 
selves and of our faculties ; of what we may and what 
we may not hope to accomplish ; of the laws and limits 
of Eeason ; and, by consequence, of the just claims of 
Faith. 



INDEX 



Absolute, philosophy of, 320, 

326 
Abstraction, 214 
Acquired perceptions, 116 

sensations, 129 
^Esthetics, the real in, 391 
Affections, 157 
Appetites, 157 

Aristotle, his division of specu- 
lative philosophy, 5 
his metaphysics, account 

of, 11, 14, 22 
his division of the facul- 
ties of the soul, 2 7 
on sensation as related to 

mind and matter, 92 
his common and proper 

sensible*, 109 
quoted on imagination, 

139 
his memory and rem n- 
iscence,43,44, 140,141 
his definition of passions, 

152 

quoted on pleasure in 

perception, memory, 

and hope, 156 

on volition anddcsire, 172 

on the unity of notions, 

210 
his treatment of mental 
ass ociation, 234 



Aristotle on moral judgments 
as natural, 260 
on consciousness in sleep, 

356 
on justice, 387 
Arithmetic, foundation of, 213 
distinctive features of, as 
compared with geo- 
metry, 256 
necessary truths in, 257, 
259 
Association of ideas, 233 

laws of repetition and 
redintegration in, 239 
local, described by Shel- 
ley, 240 
law of preference in, 241 
importance of, over-esti- 
mated, 244 
Attention, 130 
Augustine, St., on the soul as 

in the body, 93 
Axioms in geometry, 254, 256, 
285 

Being distinguished from phe- 
nomenon, ^ s , 395 
science of, according to 

Aristotle, L6 
philosophy of, 283, 395 
Berkeley, Bishop, Ids theory of 
■ion, 82, 124 



400 



INDEX. 



Berkeley, Bishop, on abstraction 
and general ideas, 217 
his idealism, 330 
Beautiful, the, 391 
Boscovich's theory of matter, 

336 
Brewster, Sir David, his theory 
of the line of visible direc- 
tion, 127 
Brown, Dr. Thomas, on the 
muscular sense, 102 
on the classification of the 

mental powers, 149 
denies the existence of 
power in causation, 
269 
Brutes, consciousness in, 49, 

50 
Butler, Bishop, his argument on 
immortality of the soul, 
371 
on the nature of virtue 
389 

Carpenter, Dr., on effluvia in 
smell, 72 
on taste, 75 
Causality, principle of, 266 

Hamilton's theory of, ex- 
amined, 271 
Cheselden, his experiment on a 

blind patient, 41 
Classification of mental pheno- 
mena, system of, 195 
Coleridge, S. T., on the associa- 
tion of ideas, 244 
on the idea of sub- 
stance, 262 
Conception, 198 

difference between intui- 
tive and symbolical, 
202, 206 



Conception, limits of, 204, 211 

distinguished from im- 
agination, 206 

laws of, 208 

forms of, 209 
Concepts distinguished from in- 
tuitions, 37 

characteristics of, 38, 39 

distinctive features of, 
40 

proper, 209 
Condillac, his hypothesis of the 
statue, 51, 63 

on sensation as the only 
source of ideas, 143 

on the association of ideas, 
245 

on subtraction as denumer- 
ation, 257 
Conscience, 169, 378 
Consciousness — 

application of term, 29 

presentative and repre- 
sentative, 33, 40, 54 

ultimate object of, 35 

clearness and distinctness 
of, 46 

compound nature of, 51 

form of, 58 

intuitive, forms of, 59 

matter of, 66 

physical growth of, 87 

sensitive, 87, 97 

attention a necessary con- 
dition of, 135 

matter of, 146 

moral, 169 

of personality, 180 

representative, 183 

two elements in every 
phenomenon of, 273 

realities of, 283 



INDEX. 



401 



Consciousness, real, as not given 
in, 325 
real, as given in, 336 
Cosmology, rational, 291, 295, 
297 
the real in, 348 
Cousin, Victor, on the moral 
sense, 163 
on causation as manifested 
in volition, 175 
Cudworth, his theory of morals, 
161 

D'Alembert, his view of meta- 
physics, 10 
Deity. See God 
Demonstration, not possible of 

matters of fact, 278 
Dependence, feeling of, indi- 
cative of God's exist- 
ence, 375 
absolute, Schleiermacher's 
theory of, 381 
Descartes on the idea of sub- 
stance as derived from 
self, 265 
on the essence of matter 

and mind, 206 
his cog 'do, ergo sum, 133, 
355 
Desires, 157 

Destutt-Tracy, on the sensations 
of touch, 8 1 
on the feeling of resist- 
ance, 102, 105 
Distance, perception of, 94, 124 
Dreams in relation to volition, 
176 

Emotions, 151 

distinguished from pas- 
sions, 154 



Eternity, represented by the 
schoolmen as a nunc stans, 
385 
Extension, consciousness of, 85, 
difficulty involved in the 
notion of, 351 
External world, how perceived, 
96, 113 



Feeling, or touch, sense of, 8 1 
Fichte, philosophy of, 302 

his criticism of revelation, 
390 
First cause, Aristotle's theory of, 

19 
Figure, perception of, 126 
Foreknowledge, as related to 

free-will, 385 
Free agency a condition of 
personal existence, 360 
Kant's theory concerning, 
368 

Generalisation, 214 

intuitive, 200 
Geometry, foundation of, 213 
necessary truths in, 254, 

259 
distinctive features of, as 
compared with arith- 
metic, 256 
God as first and final cause, 
Aristotle's theory con- 
cerning, 20 
being of, cannot be de- 
monstrated, 279, 372 
indications of his ex- 
igence, 373 
personality of, 372 
Good, the, 391 

and bad, notions of, 166 



L> !) 



402 



INDEX. 



Hamilton, Sir William, on con- 
sciousness, 24 
his distinction between 
sensation and percep- 
tion, 68-70 
on taste and smell in 

brutes, 71 
on sense and intelligence, 

88 
on primary and second- 
. ary qualities of body, 
105, 110, 112 
on secundo-primary quali- 
ties, 113 
on understanding and im- 
agination, 206 
on history of doctrine of 
mental association, 233 
his two general laws of 

association, 239 
his theory of causality, 

271 
on the infinite, 278 
Hartley, David, his views on 
the association of ideas, 245 
Hearing, sense of, 76 

sensation and perception 

in, 77 
not cognisant of an ex- 
ternal world, 77 
Hegel, on philosophy in Ger- 
many and England, 3, 4 
his description of cos- 
mology, 297 
philosophy of, 306, 311 
Herbart, philosophy of, 316 
Hope, same faculty as imagina- 
tion and memory, 141 
passion of, 156 
Hume, David, denies the exist- 
ence of power in causation, 
269 



Hume, David, denies the exist- 
ence of mind as well as mat- 
ter, 332 

Hutcheson, his theory of a 
moral sense, 161 

Ideas, innate, 272 
Imagination, 137 

definition of, 138 
two kinds of, 139 
psychologically identical 
with memory and hope, 
141 
only possible with regard 
to individual objects, 
142 
Immortality not a necessary at- 
tribute of personal existence, 
371 
Individual, signification of term, 
35 
the ultimate object of all 
complete consciousness, 
198 
Infinite, not immediately pre- 
sented in consciousness, 
277, 381 
necessity of belief in, 382 
Innate ideas, 272 
Instinct, Morell's view of, 50 
resemblance to intelli- 
gence, 50 
Intelligence, lowest degree, 

42 
Intuitions, 33, 53 

association of, 43 
internal and external, 

division of, 145 
internal, classification of, 
146 
Intuitive consciousness. See 
Presentative 



INDEX. 



403 



Jouffroy, on the limits of psy- 
chology and physiology, 
28 

on the classification of 
the passions, 153 

on properties of matter 
and faculties of mind, 
180 

his theory of beauty, 395 
Judgment, 220 

analytical and synthetical, 
221 

form and matter of, 222 

Kant's forms of, 224 

Kant, on sensation and per- 
ception, 70, 71, 76 

his division of mental 
phenomena, 150 

his use of the term repre- 
sentation f 184 

his categories, 193 

his view of the form of 
concepts, 209 

his analytical and syn- 
thetical judgments, 
221 

his four forms of judg- 
ment, 224 

his theory of syllogisms, 
230 

critical philosophy of, 299 

his dogmatism in negation, 
354 

on personality as connect- 
ed with volition, 362, 
368 

his distinction "between 
the phenomenal and 
teal sell', 368 

his proof of the existence 
of God, 372, 377 



Kant, his theory of the autonomy 
of the will, 377 

his criticism of revelation, 
390 

his theory of beauty, 392, 
394 

Language, origin of, 47 

relation to thought, 187, 

293 
unites individual at- 
tributes, 201 
Latent modifications of mind, 

135 
Leibnitz, his distinction between 
intuitive and sym- 
bolical knowledge, 40, 
189 
his monads, 42 
his distinction of cog- 
nitions as clear, obscure, 
etc., 46, 135 
on perception as imply- 
ing previous percep- 
tion, 87 
Limitation, consciousness of, 3 7 3 
Locke, his use of the term re- 
fection, 67 
on sensation and reflec- 
tion, 143 
on general ideas, 217 
on innate ideas, 272 
on the limits of thought, 

276 
his account of substance, 
327 
Locomotive faculty, 95, 113 
dependent on will, 95 
cognisant of an external 

world, 95 
manner of its exertion, 97 
Logic, 194, 230 



404 



INDEX. 



Mackintosh, Sir James, on the 

association of ideas, 245 
Magnitude, perception of, 124 
Matter, denied by Berkeley and 
Hume, 330, 332 
Peripatetic theory of, 333 
Memory same faculty as im- 
agination and hope, 141 
Mental association, Hamilton's 
theory of, 233. See also 
Association 
Mesmerism, etc., possible ex- 
planation of, 178 
Metaphysics, origin of the name, 
2 
signification of term, 2, 

23 
definition of, 6, 26 
ancient treatment of, 11 
problem of, 12 
Aristotelian, 14 
division into two branches, 

27 
dogmatic, 285 
subdivisions of, 289 
of matter, equivalent to 
the principles of phy- 
sics, 350 
Mill, James, on association of 
ideas, 239, 240 
denies the existence of 
power in causation, 269 
Molyneux, his correspondence 

with Locke on vision, 126 
Moral faculty, 158 

sense, theory of, 161 
judgment, true nature 

and origin of, 165 
obligation, indicative of 
God's existence, 377 
Moral judgments, necessity of, 
explained, 260 



Morality, the real in, 386 
Morell, J. D., on consciousness 
in brutes, 50 
on the theory of vision, 
128 
Muller, on consciousness of ex- 
tension in senses, 86 
on sensitive consciousness, 

98 
on notion of an external 

world, 99 
on vision, 122 
Muller, Julius, his criticism of 
Kant's theory of morals, 
377 
on morality as placed in 
the will of God, 379 
Muscular sense, 101 

Necessary truths, 248 
logical, 250, 253 
mathematical, 250, 253 
moral, 251, 260 
metaphysical, 251, 261 

Necessity, physical, 251 

Notions, general, 215 

their relation to time, 37 

Nunneley, Mr., his experiment 
on a blind patient, 127 

Object and subject, their re- 
lation to each other, 54 
Objective and subjective, meaning 

of the terms, 55 
Obligation, moral, 377 
Ontology, 283 

three fundamental ideas 

in, 290 
necessary conditions of, 

323 
to be identified with 
psychology, 397 



INDEX. 



405 



Pantheism equivalent to athe- 
ism, 372 
Passions, 151 

general definition of, 153 
distinguished from emo- 
tions, 154 
Perception, proper, definition of, 
68 
referred to the intellect, 

85 
signification of term, 67, 
92 
Perceptions, acquired, 116 
Personal identity, 365 
Personality, its relation to voli- 
tion, 175 
consciousness of, 180, 356 
in ontology, 354 
two necessary conditions 
of (time and free 
agency), 360 
primary fact in a science 
of being, 396 
Phenomenon distinguished from 

being, 8, 395 
Philosophy, definition of term, 6 
speculative, its division 
according to Aristotle, 
5 
Physics, principles and results of, 
equivalent to the metaphy- 
sics of matter, 350 
Plato, his dialectic, 12, 395 

on desire as distinct from 

volition, 172 
quoted on unity and plur- 
ality in concepts, 227 
on morality, 387 
Pleasure and pain, relative 
nature of, 129 
relation to emotion and 
ju-sion, 155 



Pleasure and pain, distinction 
from right and wrong, 
159 
Plurality and unity, Aristotle's 

theory of, 18 
Postils, etymology of term com- 
pared with that of Metaphy- 
sics, 2 
Potential and actual, Aristotle's 

distinction between, 17 
Presentative consciousness, 33, 
54 
distinguished from repre- 
sentative, 40 
distinctive feature, 52 
forms of (space and time), 

59 
matter of (experience), 

66 
divided into external and 
internal intuition, 145 
Priestley, Dr., on the association 

of ideas, 245 
Primaiy and secondary qualities 
of body, 105 
directly perceived only 
in our own organism, 
108 
correspond to the Aris- 
totelian common and 
proper sensibles, 109 
enumeration aud charac- 
teristics of each, 110, 
113 
distinguished from se- 
cundo-primary quali- 
ties, 113 
Psychology, how it distinguishes 
between various men- 
tal powers, 195 
rational and empirical, 
distinguished, 291 



406 



INDEX. 



Psychology, rational, character 
of, 293 
the real in, 354 
should include ontology, 
397 

Qualities of body, 105 

Kational psychology, 293 

theology, 207 
Keal, in consciousness (ontology), 
283, 336 
theories of, not founded 
on consciousness, 325 
Reality distinguished from ap- 
pearance, 337 
conclusion on, 395 
Reason and understanding, un- 
necessary distinctions, 280 
Reasoning, 227 

matter and form of, 228, 

230 
laws of, 229 
Reflective consciousness, 183 
Reflection, Locke's use of term, 

67, 143 
Reid, Dr., his theory of con- 
sciousness, 24 
on sensation and percep- 
tion, 68 
on the locality of sound, 

77 
on the primary qualities 

of body, 106 
on attention, 131 
on imagination and con- 
ception, 137 
on substance, 327 
Representation, various mean- 
ings of the term, 183, 184 
Representative consciousness, 
183 



Representative consciousness, 
distinguished from pre- 
sentative, 40 
form of, 190 
Resistance, its reference to sensa- 
tion, 96 
attributes contained un- 
der, 113 
Right and wrong. See Moral 

Faculty 
Royer-Collard on the idea of 
substance as derived from 
self, 265 

Scepticism, tropes of, 342 
Schelling, philosophy of, 306 
Schleiermacher's theory of ab- 
solute dependence, 381 
Secondary qualities of body, 88 
Secundo-primary qualities of 

body, 113 
Self, consciousness of, 180 
Sensation, signification of term, 
67 
proper, definition of, 68 
its relation to perception, 

86 
belongs to mind, not to 

body, 90 
function of the nerves in, 

92 
muscular, 101 
Sensations, acquired, 129 
Senses, the five, 70, 84 

psychological character- 
istics of, 84 
classification of, different 
from that of thought, 
196 
indicate appearance and 
not reality, 88, 341 
Sensibles, proper, 88 



INDEX. 



407 



Shaftesbury, Lord, his criticism 
of Locke's use of the word 
innate, 273 
Shelley on local association of 

ideas, 240 
Sight, sense of, 78 

object of, 79, 80 
not immediately cogni- 
sant of extra-organic 
world, 79. See Vision. 
Sleep, mental phenomena of, 179 
Smell, 71 

true object of, 72 
conveys no knowledge of 
extra-organic matter, 73 
Space, as a form of intuitive con- 
sciousness, 59 
as the basis of necessity 
in geometry, 258 
Solidity, perception of, 126 
Soul, its simplicity and im- 
mortality cannot be demon- 
strated, 370 
Stewart, Dugald, on meaning of 
word Metaphysics, 2 
his condemnation of on- 
tology, 10 
his definition of percep- 
tion, 69 
on the primary qualities 

of body, 108 
on attention as connected 
withconsciousnes8,132 
on imagination and con- 
ception, 138 
on the theory of morals, 

160 
on volition in Bleep, 1 77 
on mathematical axioms, 
213 
Subject and object, their re- 
lation to each other, 55 



Subjective and objective, meaning 

of the terms, 54 
Substance, Aristotle's senses of 
the term, 17 
principle of, 261 
Locke's account of, 327 
Syllogism, Kant's theory of, 230 

matter of the, 228 
Symbols, necessary to concep- 
tion, 202 

Taste, sense of, compared with 
smell, 74 
object of, 75 
philosophy of, 391 
Theology, Aristotle's view of, 5, 
12 
rational, 291, 297, 371 
Thought, 33, 53 

three successive repre- 
sentations in, 40 
form of, 190 
distinguished from in- 
tuition, 53 
Kant's categories of, 193 
laws of, 209, 225, 231 
contingent, 234 
necessary, 233 
limits of, 275, 353 
office of, 191 
matter of, 193 
operations of, 194 
reducible to comparison, 

198 
relative to judgment, 
225 
Time as a form of intuitive con- 
sciousness, 64 
a condition of personality, 
360 
Touch, Bense of, 81 

Bensations belonging to, 81 



408 



INDEX. * 



Touch, not immediately cogni- 
sant of external world, 
81 
often confounded with 
locomotive faculty, 81 

Truth and falsehood, 161 

Truths, necessary, 248 

Understanding and reason, 
unnecessary distinctions, 280 

Unity and plurality, Aristotle's 
theory of, 18 

Virtue, 388 

Vision, acquired perceptions of, 
118 
erect, 127 

single, with two eyes, 125 
Vives, Ludovicus, on the associ- 
ation of ideas, 241 



from de- 



Volition, 171, 269 
distinguished 

sire, 171 
immediate consciousness 

of self in, 175 
essential characteristic 

of, 176 
suspended in sleep, 177 
an element of personality, 

362 

Whewell, Dr., on the theory 

of a moral sense, 167 
Will. See Volition 
Wolf on intuitive and symboli- 
cal cognition, 189, 202 
on intuitive generalisa- 
tion, 200 
on symbolical intuitions, 
202, 204 



THE END. 



Printed by R. Clark, Edinburgh. 



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